Stranger Passing

Photographer Joel Sternfeld turns his exacting eye to American faces, social classes, character types and stereotypes in Stranger Passing. Sternfeld who wowed critics in 1987 with American Prospects devotes a remarkable (and remarkably large) volume to 60 hard-edged, full-color studies of individuals from Manhattan to Malibu, Austin, Texas to Appalachia, in candids and portraits by turns comic, disturbing, angry, pathetic and silly. A surprised lawyer struggles with bundles of laundry; a lumberjack shows off his truck, his logs and his belly button; and ""two men on vacation in Bigfoot, Montana"" smile through big mustaches at their tiny dog. Journalist Ian Frazier (On the Rez) and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art curator Douglas R. Nickel contribute short essays. (Sept.)