The work of Brooklyn-based photographer Joni Sternbach is held by many international collections, including the National Portrait Gallery, London, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and LA County Museum of Art. She is the author of several critically acclaimed monographs including Surf Site Tin Type, Surfland, and Surfboard. This title, kissing a stranger, is a study of Sternbach’s early work made during the 1970s and 1980s. In essence it is a portrait of the artist as a young woman forming her visual language through freedom of experimentation and expression. She says ‘finding my way towards independence and autonomy as a young art student was both intensely lonely and toughening. A camera around my neck afforded me a feeling of protection. It allowed me to project myself onto the world around me; with my needs, my desires and my loneliness exposed – I felt less vulnerable. I looked at the city not from above or below, but straight on. Photographing myself and my family became my coping mechanism. These images are a product of that era.’
