| Tim Hawkinson | Octopus | | Cindy Sherman | Untitled Film Still #82 | | Robert Glenn Ketchum | Lakeshore in Morning Fog | | Abelardo Morell | Camera Obscura Image of the Grand Tetons in Resort Room, Jackson Hole, Wyoming | | John Sanchez | Rachel Rosenthal, Artist | | Mitch Epstein | Buena Vista, Colorado | | Leland Rice | Volkswagen With Figure | | Catherine Wagner | The Lamps of 1900 | | Ned Sloane | Telephone Pole Piece, Los Angeles: Photograph of Kim Jones | | Andrew Freeman | #3.4.04- Don Becker's Garage & Guesthouse, Independence, California N36O.48.229 - W118O.11.620 | | Ken Gonzales-Day | Franklin Avenue (1920) | | Jo Ann Callis | Man in Tie | | Bruce Nauman | Burning Small Fires (Artist Book) | | Annie Leibovitz | Scarlett Johansson, Chateau Marmont, West Hollywood | | David Maisel | Oblivion 1382-52p | | Gilbert B. Weingourt | Timothy Leary | | Richard Misrach | Untitled (Ocotillo) | | Edward Steichen | Sylvia Sidney, Hollywood | | Ruben Ochoa | Fwy Wall Extraction | | Hunter S. Thompson and others | From "Gonzo" | | Henry Wessel | Las Vegas No. 15 | | James Fee | Epiphany | | John Baldessari | Face (with Red Nose): Plus Four Alternate Noses | | Anthony Hernandez | Everything #2 | | Ansel Adams | Graduation dress | | Loretta Ayeroff | Mountain View, Edris Drive | | Grant Mudford | Walt Disney Concert Hall, Under Construction #7 | | Frederick Sommer | Stendhal | | Tina Modotti | Interior of the Church Tower at Tepotzotlan | | Henri Cartier-Bresson | Mexico City | | Irving Penn | Hell's Angels, San Francisco | | William Dassonville | From Glacier Point | | Christina Fernandez | Fashion International | | Mark Laita | Air Traffic Controller, Todd Phipps, Palmdale, California, May 5, 2006
Juggler, Sergey Gripkov, Los Angeles, February 21, 2000 | | Mark Wyse | Untitled Landscape | | U.S. Air Force 1352nd Photographic Group, Lookout Mountain Station | Sugar, 1.2 Kilotons, Nevada | | Julius Shulman | Von Sternberg Residence, Northridge | | Joaquin Trujillo | Amy, Los Ninos | | Robert Heinecken | Shiva Manifesting as a Single Mother | | Han Nguyen | Tsunami | | Melanie Einzig | Bikram Yoga Instructor, North Beach, San Francisco | | John Patrick Salisbury | Untitled No. 134 | | Karen Halverson | Gamble House Entry | | Bill Owens | 4th of July Parade, Pleasanton, California | | Catherine Opie | My Studio, Suzanne's Work | | Eliot Porter | Reflections in Pool, Escalante River, Utah | | Adam Bartos | Los Angeles | | Stan Honda | From the Heart Mountain Barracks Project | | Hiromu Kira | The Thinker | | Jeff Mermelstein | Yosemite National Park, California | | Lewis Baltz | West Wall, Unoccupied Industrial Structure, 20 Airway Drive, Costa Mesa | | Dennis Hopper | Robert Irwin | | Hansel Mieth and Otto Hagel | S.F. Water Front | | Edward Burtynsky | Oxford Tire Pile #8, Westley, California | | Beahan & McPhee | Almond Trees and Flood Irrigation, Oakdale | | Larry Sultan | Boxers, Mission Hills | | Isabel Gomes | Blue Horizon, Santa Rosa Island | | Edward Weston | Cabbage Leaf | | Anthony Friedkin | Offshore Winds, Zuma Beach | | Richard Long | Donner Pass Circle: Along a 20 Day Walk from Ebbetts Pass to the North Fork Feather River Sierra Nevada California 2005 | | John Swope | Dorothy McGuire, Beverly Hills | | Hans-Christian Schink | LA Night #1 | | Herve Friend | Redlands From Smiley Hill | | Joel Sternfeld | Queen of the Prom, the Range Nightclub, Slab City, California |
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Joel Sternfeld
Queen of the Prom, the Range Nightclub, Slab City, California
2005, March
LL/15275
Photo Synthesis
Colin Westerbeck
When the military base near Niland, east of the Salton Sea, was dismantled after World War II, squatters began pitching tents and parking trailers on the concrete slabs that were left. A community has been there ever since. Its amenities now include a Christian church, a library, a country club with gravel "greens" and an outdoor nightclub called the Range, named for the aerial gunnery range in the nearby Chocolate Mountains.
Sitting in one of the nightclub's scavenged rows of movie theater and airline seats, inside a fence made from old chrome automobile bumpers, a young woman named Moira strikes a forlorn, Cinderellalike figure. She's all dressed up with no place to go; or, at least, she didn't go to her high school prom, so they made her Queen of the Prom at the Range. If that's not community spirit, what is?
Joel Sternfeld has traveled America photographing its landscapes and people for more than 25 years. His 1987 book, "American Prospects," is considered a classic. He's always found our prospects a bit mixed, however a combination of affluence and tackiness, hope and malaise. His visits to Slab City, Zzyzx Springs and other California communities were part of his recent project photographing American utopias, which will be published this year. This picture from Slab City suggests that the possibilities Sternfeld sees in American life include dystopia as well as utopia.
[Originally published in West Magazine : February 5, 2006, p.13]
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