About Arthur Sterngold
To contact me, please send email to [email protected]
To contact me, please send email to [email protected]
Most of the photographs on this website were taken in and around Muncy, Hughesville, and Williamsport, PA. I created these images to celebrate the pleasures and peculiarities of everyday life in Central Pennsylvania. In 2022 and 2023, these pictures won three Best In Show awards and nineteen first place ribbons in local and regional photography competitions.
I spent the first half of my life living in large urban areas, such as New York, Chicago, and Atlanta. When I moved to Central PA to join the business faculty at Bucknell University, I had a hard time acclimating to the slower and more natural pace of life in our rural locale. I missed the constant stimulation and endless amusements that big cities offer.
Eventually, I blew the dust off my camera, which I had barely used in years, and I started taking photographs of things in my immediate vicinity. Backyard birds. Bubbling creeks. Blossoming wildflowers. Back-alley barbershops. Bent spoon garden stakes. By looking through the lens of my camera, I was finally able to see things that had been invisible or irrelevant to me in the past. These subjects might seem trivial to big city sophisticates, but they add meaning and joy to everyday life in our neck of the woods, and they strengthen our shared sense of community and place.
As an undergraduate student at Princeton University, I studied fine art photography with Emmet Gowin, a renowned artist whose works have been exhibited worldwide. Emmet maintained that a photograph can be created to tell a story, to evoke an emotional response, or to give form to a creative vision. A photograph can be a work of art. I was inspired by Emmet’s vision and hoped to follow in his footsteps, but after graduating from college, I put my photography on the back burner to pursue careers in other fields.
Now that I’m using my camera again, I still aspire to create photographs that have artistic merit, but I want them to be images that local residents can enjoy and relate to. Photographs that remind us that our region is more than just a stretch of flyover country between New York and Los Angeles.
I spent the first half of my life living in large urban areas, such as New York, Chicago, and Atlanta. When I moved to Central PA to join the business faculty at Bucknell University, I had a hard time acclimating to the slower and more natural pace of life in our rural locale. I missed the constant stimulation and endless amusements that big cities offer.
Eventually, I blew the dust off my camera, which I had barely used in years, and I started taking photographs of things in my immediate vicinity. Backyard birds. Bubbling creeks. Blossoming wildflowers. Back-alley barbershops. Bent spoon garden stakes. By looking through the lens of my camera, I was finally able to see things that had been invisible or irrelevant to me in the past. These subjects might seem trivial to big city sophisticates, but they add meaning and joy to everyday life in our neck of the woods, and they strengthen our shared sense of community and place.
As an undergraduate student at Princeton University, I studied fine art photography with Emmet Gowin, a renowned artist whose works have been exhibited worldwide. Emmet maintained that a photograph can be created to tell a story, to evoke an emotional response, or to give form to a creative vision. A photograph can be a work of art. I was inspired by Emmet’s vision and hoped to follow in his footsteps, but after graduating from college, I put my photography on the back burner to pursue careers in other fields.
Now that I’m using my camera again, I still aspire to create photographs that have artistic merit, but I want them to be images that local residents can enjoy and relate to. Photographs that remind us that our region is more than just a stretch of flyover country between New York and Los Angeles.
A note about photographic prints
Today, many photographers have little involvement in the process of creating physical prints from their images. I take the opposite approach and print all of my photographs on my own in-house equipment. I print these images one at a time and constantly make small adjustments along the way, a practice that traditional printmakers and lithographers have used for centuries. These artists and craftsmen regarded each print as a unique work of art rather than as a reproduction.
Today, many photographers have little involvement in the process of creating physical prints from their images. I take the opposite approach and print all of my photographs on my own in-house equipment. I print these images one at a time and constantly make small adjustments along the way, a practice that traditional printmakers and lithographers have used for centuries. These artists and craftsmen regarded each print as a unique work of art rather than as a reproduction.