The creation of Joel Sternfeld’s seminal American Prospects is firmly embedded in the history of the photobook. In late August 1978, Sternfeld left New York City and headed out into the American landscape. At the time he thought he would follow the seasons for a year, but with the help of two Guggenheim Fellowships and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, his journey lasted six years. Sternfeld recalled at the time that the pictures he made were the efforts of “someone who grew up with a vision of classical regional America and the order it seemed to contain, to find beauty and harmony in an increasingly uniform, technological and disturbing America.” Working at the pace of two 8 x 10 negatives a day, and not seeing results for several months, he story-boarded at night in his Volkswagen camper.