Joel Sternfeld
Abandoned Uranium Refinery, Near Tuba City, Arizona, Navajo Nation

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Artist Joel Sternfeld American, born 1944

CultureAmerican

Titles

Abandoned Uranium Refinery, Near Tuba City, Arizona, Navajo Nation
Abandoned Uranium Refinery, Tuba City, Arizona
from the series American Prospects

DateAugust 1982, printed April 1982

PlaceTuba City, Arizona, United States

MediumDye imbibition print

DimensionsImage: 13 1/2 × 17 5/16 in. (34.3 × 44 cm)
Sheet: 16 × 19 7/8 in. (40.6 × 50.5 cm)

Credit LineGift of Helen Levitt

Object number84.726.3

Not on view

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Department

Photography

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

DescriptionJoel Sternfeld is well known for his large-format color photographs that extend the photographic tradition of chronicling roadside America. Sternfeld studied changing national character and explored the possibility of a collective American identity by documenting ordinary people and places that he encountered throughout the country. Between 1956 and 1966, the refinery pictured here consumed 796,489 tons of uranium ore from nearby mines, and produced almost five million pounds of fuel for the nation. Using an eight-by-ten-inch camera, Sternfeld achieved a crisply detailed image of the refinery and its natural environment. With his careful attention to the photograph’s visual qualities and no small measure of irony, Sternfeld presents the relic of energy production in a spectacular color photograph.
ProvenanceHelen Levitt, New York; given to MFAH, 1984.

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