Joel Sternfeld

Manufactured by L.F. Deardorff & Sons in Chicago from the 1920s through the 1980s, the 8×10 is a wooden field camera producing negatives 8 by 10 inches. Its bellows design allows for full front and rear movements including tilt, swing, and shift.

“Sternfeld shot "American Prospects" (1987) and his subsequent series on a large-format 8×10 view camera; the scale of the negative and the deliberation required by the camera's operation shaped his practice of spending extended time in a location before exposing a single sheet of film. His use of the 8×10 is documented in multiple interviews and in the afterword to the expanded edition of "American Prospects" (2003).”

Velvia 50 is a color reversal film introduced by Fujifilm in 1990, rated at ISO 50. Its extremely fine grain and vivid color saturation made it the standard film among landscape and wildlife photographers through the 1990s and 2000s. It remains in production and is favored by photographers working with medium and large format cameras.

“Sternfeld shot his large-format color work on Fujifilm Velvia; the film's fine grain and saturated color were particularly suited to the 8×10 negative's capacity for tonal detail at large print sizes. His use of Velvia is mentioned in interviews accompanying "Sweet Earth: Experimental Utopias in America" (2006).”