On Photography: Joel Sternfeld: First Pictures

Grand old men of fine-art color photography. His American Prospects (1987) and Stranger Passing (2001) are photobook classics, and Walking the High Line (2002) was instrumental in the creation of the city's innovative park.

The 70 prints at Luhring Augustine are 8 1/2-by-12 3/4-inch pigment prints run off last year from Kodachrome slides taken for four of Mr. Sternfeld's earliest color projects: Happy Anniversary, Sweetie Face!; Rush Hour; At the Mall, New Jersey; and Nags Head 1975. These pictures, shot between 1972 and 1980, show the artist finding his way in an unfamiliar medium, finger exercises preparing for the major works ahead.

There are experiments with color such as New York City, (#1), 1976, where the back of the woman's electric-lime-green dress, her pale flesh, and the yellow of two taxis are set against the dark tones of a Midtown street. In many of the New Jersey mall pictures, Mr. Sternfeld takes portraits using a flash that separates his subjects from the background deep in shadows. And there is the deliciously sardonic wit of New Jersey, (#3) May/June 1980, in which a young woman in the foreground, in a position similar to that of the subject in Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World, looks across the mall parking lot to the Sears Auto Service center. One senses Mr. Sternfeld's excitement at learning to do new things.