Skip to main contentBiographyRobert von Sternberg is a distinguished career artist, photographer, university art educator, and philanthropist.
1700+ examples of his photography have been acquired for permanent art collections by 247 national and international public institutions in 47 states, Washington D.C., Australia, Canada, France, England, Ireland, Luxembourg, and Switzerland. His photographs have been included in more than 267 museum, university, or private art gallery exhibitions and his photographic work has been reviewed and/or reproduced in 101 publications. He has served as a guest curator for 18 art exhibitions and is the founding director of a philanthropic association of 22 internationally recognized later career American artist photographers offering donations of their vintage and contemporary photographic work to selected institutional art collections from a program known as The Museum Project 2012-2022.
Prior to grade school, when I had finally graduated from finger painting, I began to render certain primitive details of my real and/or imaginary childhood environment with pencils. In these attempts to capture spaces, objects, and events by drawing them, I was motivated by the fascination I had, and still have, with the visual power of the illustrations in certain vintage editions of Andersen’s and Grimm’s fairy tales. I was also motivated by artist’s interpretations of life found in various encyclopedias as well as the ads on the rear covers of National Geographic. In 1961, I finished a degree in electronics but upon visiting a company in my area of interest, I discovered that I did not want to work in an office. I returned to school in1962 and started a major in social sciences. At this time, I had developed an intense passion for photography. From the first rolls of black and white film I shot and processed, I sold a series of images to Surfer Magazine and was offered a staff photographer’s position. Upon my 1965 University Graduation, I accepted a teaching position in a secondary school. After two years I resigned and wandered Europe and North Africa for 14 months in a VW Van. As a result of the images I had created during my travels, I found myself involved in Art Museum Exhibitions, Guest Curatorships, and a six-page Art in America review of a one-year Newport Harbor Art Museum Commission. In 1969, I accepted a position teaching Photography at Santa Ana College, California. In 1970 I was appointed Chairperson of the Art Department. My next position was at California State University, Northridge. In 2006, I retired as a Professor Emeritus with 35 years of teaching Photography in the CSUN Art Department. In 2004, after four decades of printing black and white images, I returned to producing color images. This was a result of the inkjet paper selections now being capable of rendering color acceptable to my personal standards. It was thus a full circle moment for me to be able to make the color images again that had given me, as a child, such satisfaction.
From the earliest efforts to irrigate the desert, to the post-war population explosion, to present day suburban sprawl and conservation efforts, human enterprise has shaped the landscape of Los Angeles. It is perhaps appropriate that Robert von Sternberg, who has lived and worked most of his life in Los Angeles County, identifies human incursions into the natural world as a recurring theme at the heart of his photographic practice.
Avid travelers, von Sternberg and his wife Patricia are especially fond of road trips where the photographer delights in the off-beat side of the American touristic tradition. Far from focusing on the most canonical or a scenic tourist destination, the artist seizes on the visual possibilities of overlooked roadside attractions and chance conjunctions. The surreal artificial lighting that illuminates the American nighttime often provides the "definitive photographic images" that von Sternberg seeks in his travels: an incandescent gas station, the lurid red glow from a paper lantern, a grid of ceiling lights that mimic distance stars. Camera-toting fellow tourists also becomes subjects as they seek their own definitive images -which sometimes also include the photographer himself. More often, though, von Sternberg capture scenes in which human figures are distant or absent. In this, his "decisive moments" are very unlike the densely populated ones pictured by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Still, von Sternberg's roadside moments are crowded despite their ostensible vacancy. Through the roads, fences, signage, buildings, and all the other material structures of civilization, humanity marks the land; even in our bodily absence, we make our presence instantly known.
Caitlin Silberman
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA.
(https://artcloud.market/artist/robert-von-sternberg-i)
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for Robert von Sternberg
Robert von Sternberg
American, born 1939
1700+ examples of his photography have been acquired for permanent art collections by 247 national and international public institutions in 47 states, Washington D.C., Australia, Canada, France, England, Ireland, Luxembourg, and Switzerland. His photographs have been included in more than 267 museum, university, or private art gallery exhibitions and his photographic work has been reviewed and/or reproduced in 101 publications. He has served as a guest curator for 18 art exhibitions and is the founding director of a philanthropic association of 22 internationally recognized later career American artist photographers offering donations of their vintage and contemporary photographic work to selected institutional art collections from a program known as The Museum Project 2012-2022.
Prior to grade school, when I had finally graduated from finger painting, I began to render certain primitive details of my real and/or imaginary childhood environment with pencils. In these attempts to capture spaces, objects, and events by drawing them, I was motivated by the fascination I had, and still have, with the visual power of the illustrations in certain vintage editions of Andersen’s and Grimm’s fairy tales. I was also motivated by artist’s interpretations of life found in various encyclopedias as well as the ads on the rear covers of National Geographic. In 1961, I finished a degree in electronics but upon visiting a company in my area of interest, I discovered that I did not want to work in an office. I returned to school in1962 and started a major in social sciences. At this time, I had developed an intense passion for photography. From the first rolls of black and white film I shot and processed, I sold a series of images to Surfer Magazine and was offered a staff photographer’s position. Upon my 1965 University Graduation, I accepted a teaching position in a secondary school. After two years I resigned and wandered Europe and North Africa for 14 months in a VW Van. As a result of the images I had created during my travels, I found myself involved in Art Museum Exhibitions, Guest Curatorships, and a six-page Art in America review of a one-year Newport Harbor Art Museum Commission. In 1969, I accepted a position teaching Photography at Santa Ana College, California. In 1970 I was appointed Chairperson of the Art Department. My next position was at California State University, Northridge. In 2006, I retired as a Professor Emeritus with 35 years of teaching Photography in the CSUN Art Department. In 2004, after four decades of printing black and white images, I returned to producing color images. This was a result of the inkjet paper selections now being capable of rendering color acceptable to my personal standards. It was thus a full circle moment for me to be able to make the color images again that had given me, as a child, such satisfaction.
From the earliest efforts to irrigate the desert, to the post-war population explosion, to present day suburban sprawl and conservation efforts, human enterprise has shaped the landscape of Los Angeles. It is perhaps appropriate that Robert von Sternberg, who has lived and worked most of his life in Los Angeles County, identifies human incursions into the natural world as a recurring theme at the heart of his photographic practice.
Avid travelers, von Sternberg and his wife Patricia are especially fond of road trips where the photographer delights in the off-beat side of the American touristic tradition. Far from focusing on the most canonical or a scenic tourist destination, the artist seizes on the visual possibilities of overlooked roadside attractions and chance conjunctions. The surreal artificial lighting that illuminates the American nighttime often provides the "definitive photographic images" that von Sternberg seeks in his travels: an incandescent gas station, the lurid red glow from a paper lantern, a grid of ceiling lights that mimic distance stars. Camera-toting fellow tourists also becomes subjects as they seek their own definitive images -which sometimes also include the photographer himself. More often, though, von Sternberg capture scenes in which human figures are distant or absent. In this, his "decisive moments" are very unlike the densely populated ones pictured by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Still, von Sternberg's roadside moments are crowded despite their ostensible vacancy. Through the roads, fences, signage, buildings, and all the other material structures of civilization, humanity marks the land; even in our bodily absence, we make our presence instantly known.
Caitlin Silberman
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA.
(https://artcloud.market/artist/robert-von-sternberg-i)
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