Joel Sternfeld

On the summer day in 1987 when Sternfeld photographed these two investment–banking hopefuls, the stock market was approaching the peak of the 1980s bull market—there were still two months before the crash that would become known as Black Monday. The young men, earnestly dressing their parts, are pictured in the shadow of a limestone edifice, looking at the camera with confidence and perhaps a hint of arrogance. Sternfeld positioned his camera low and printed the image quite large; his photograph delicately renders every aspect of their appearance. These individuals are simultaneously singular and typical, representing what Tom Wolfe identified as a generation of aspiring "Masters of the Universe" in his novel Bonfire of the Vanities, published the same year.

Sternfeld was not the first photographer to attempt to survey America through its people and the places where they live and work—Walker Evans and Robert Frank are his most significant artistic predecessors—but he was among the first to do so in color. In his capable hands the cumbersome camera becomes a sympathetic and often humorous mirror: these fresh–faced interns might be conspiring to dominate the world of finance, but they are humanized by Sternfeld's decision to depict them savoring their hot dogs in the heat, their jackets off, revealing their coordinating suspenders.