Favorite Photobooks of 2019: Our Loss

He is already quite established, and he is published by a publisher that does not need promotion. However, Joel Sternfeld’s work deserves constant attention. His latest book, Our Loss, is the most moving and important photobook I have come across in a long while. When David Buckel set himself on fire publicly in 2018 decrying the increasing pollution of the earth, his suicide was perhaps the most extreme act of “ecotage” and it was almost impossible to respond to it artistically without incurring all sorts of ethical issues. By focusing on the slow revitalization of the exact location where the tragic event happened in NYC’s Prospect Park, Sternfeld decided to pay tribute to “the hope that climate change might be reversed.” The reading of this book should be preceded and followed by a minute of silence to think about how egocentrism and ecocentrism are dangerously intertwined.