@ Riverside Art Museum
EXHIBITION ON VIEW: January 25, 2025 – July 6, 2025
Location: Members Gallery
Joel Sternfeld: On this Site
Joel Sternfeld’s series On This Site, initiated in the 1990s, marks a key moment in the evolution of conceptual landscape photography. Subverting traditional landscape aesthetics, the series documents seemingly mundane American locales that have been the sites of significant and often violent events. Sternfeld presents these sites in their current, unremarkable state to challenge viewers’ perceptions of historical continuity and interrogate the complex relationship between place, memory, and historical narrative.
Sternfeld has helped reshape critical discourse around photography’s capacity to engage with sociopolitical issues. His work stands as a bridge between late 20th-century documentary practices and the conceptually driven approaches that have come to dominate contemporary landscape photography. On This Site represents this shift; Sternfeld’s images move beyond aesthetic representation to explore themes of collective memory, historical trauma, and the nature of commemoration.
In recent years, particularly following the murder of George Floyd, public discourse has intensified around the nature and purpose of memorials, civil rights commemorations, and the representation of historical violence in America. With this series, Sternfeld redefines the role of landscape photography in documenting and interpreting these contentious spaces. Sternfeld’s work engages with location as a repository of memory and a witness to American violence, and it encourages viewers to confront the invisible histories embedded in everyday landscapes.
For the communities of Riverside, CA and the broader Inland Empire, this discussion holds particular relevance. As a region with its own complex history and diverse population, the Inland Empire stands to benefit from a nuanced exploration of how visual artists can engage with and represent local histories, including those often overlooked or suppressed.
On This Site offers a place for critical reflection on the power of images to shape public memory, challenge historical narratives, and foster community dialogue. It can offer valuable perspectives on how photography can serve as a tool for social engagement, historical reckoning, and collective healing.
Curated by Lisa Henry.
Pictured: Heart Mountain Relocation Center, Alternate Highway 14, twelve miles north of Cody, Wyoming, August 1994
One hundred and ten thousand Japanese Americans were imprisoned in twenty-four internment camps located in remote areas of the American West during the Second World War. At the time of the February 12, 1942 Executive Order initiating the forced relocation, there had not been a single act of disloyalty by a Japanese American.
In 1988, Congress awarded each surviving internee or their descendants $20,000 and an apology as retribution for the violation of their constitutional rights.
