Overspilling World: The Photographs of Janet Sternburg

Can a still photograph embody living perception? Can it contain its abundance? Can photography, which is not a timebased medium, render ongoing flow? Can it do justice to this notion of an overspilling world? To these questions, photographer Janet Sternburg (b. Boston, 1943; lives and works in Los Angeles and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico), a writer and philosopher as well as a photographer, says yes. Her work proves that photography can register the living perception that is our experience. Working without any optical or digital manipulation, and using the simplest of technical means-disposable and early iPhone cameras-she draws together the manifold aspects of the world on a single plane, portraying a vision of interpenetrating and layered time and space. Overspilling World is Janet Sternburg’s first monograph. With texts by Sternburg, art historian Pepe Karmel, photographer Catherine Opie, curator Alexandra von Stosch, and filmmakerphotographer Wim Wenders.