Sternfeld earned a BA from Dartmouth College. He began taking color photographs in 1970 after learning the color theory of Johannes Itten and Josef Albers. Color is an important element of his photographs.

He is the recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships and spent a year in Italy on a Rome Prize. He currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence College, where he holds the Noble Foundation Chair in Art and Cultural History. Sternfeld's work is held in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, among many other notable institutions listed in the "Collections" section.

Sternfeld initially started taking pictures in 1969 with a 35mm camera and Kodachrome slide film. These pictures mark the beginning of Sternfeld’s interest in documenting the American condition. The pictures are an insight into the development of his color arrangements which eventually resulted in a new language for color photography most notable in American Prospects. Sternfeld, in addition to other colorists like William Eggleston and Stephen Shore were crucial pioneers in the medium.^[5] This body of work was first published in 2012 by Steidl publishing house.

American Prospects, (first published in 1987, most recently published in 2012) is Sternfeld's most known book and explores the complexity of human-altered landscapes in the United States. He began it in 1978, when color photography was still in its infancy as an art medium. Using a large-format camera, his photographs harken back to the traditions of 19th century photography, yet are applied to everyday scenes, like a Wet n' Wild waterpark, or a suburban street in the South.^[6] He captured the faltering "prospects" (both views and opportunities) of the time. Because of his early street work, Sternfeld was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, which funded his initial tour of the states. The American Prospects photos are of people, buildings, and mostly landscapes from the multiple trips Sternfeld took between 1978 and 1984.^[7]

Campagna Romana was initially published in 1992 by Knopf publishing house. After being awarded the Rome Prize fellowship, Sternfeld extensively photographed the countryside around Rome. The pictures document the interaction between the grand romantic ruins and the invasion of modernity. Several of the images are created to form panoramic images that sometime stretch over several images. This technique presents the sweeping vistas of the countryside while also setting up contrasts between the images within each piece. In one such work, a crumbling fragment of an ancient wall huddles forlornly in one frame of a four-panel piece, surrounded by the scaffolding-clad buildings of a new apartment complex.^[8]

On This Site: Landscape in Memoriam (first published with Steidl in 1996), is a collection of pictures from famous crime sites in America. The eerily normal locations are seemingly remains left behind after tragedies, their hidden stories disturbingly invisible. Next to each photograph is text about the events that happened at that location. ^[9]

From 1991 to 1994 Sternfeld worked with Melinda Hunt to document New York City's public cemetery on Hart Island, resulting in the book "Hart Island" (1998).^[10]

Initially published by Bulfinch in 2001, and then by Steidl in 2012, Stranger Passing consists of a series of portraits that have roots in his initial project American Prospects. Over a period of fifteen years Joel Sternfeld travelled across America and took portrait photographs that form in Douglas R. Nickel’s words an “intelligent, unscientific, interpretive sampling of what Americans looked like at the century’s end.” Unlike historical portraits which represent significant people in staged surroundings, Sternfeld’s subjects are uncannily “normal”: a banker having an evening meal, a teenager collecting shopping carts in a parking lot, a homeless man holding his bedding.

Using August Sander’s classic photograph of three peasants on their way to a dance as a starting point, Sternfeld employed a conceptual strategy that amounts to a new theory of the portrait, which might be termed “The Circumstantial Portrait”.^[11]

• 1976: Recent Color Photographs by Joel Sternfeld and Recent Work by Lois Johnson, Peale House Galleries, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
• 1980: Daniel Wolf, Inc., New York, NY
• 1981: Larry Fink and Joel Sternfeld: Photographs, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
• 1981: The New Color, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY
• 1982: Joel Sternfeld, Blue Sky, Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts, Portland, OR
• 1984: American Prospects, Daniel Wolf, Inc., New York, NY
• 1984: Three Americans (Jim Goldberg, Robert Adams, Joel Sternfeld), Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
• 1985: Joel Sternfeld, Higashikawa International Photo Festival, Higashikawa, Japan
• 1985: Joel Sternfeld, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
• 1985: New Color Photography, The Halsted Gallery, Birmingham, MI
• 1985: Joel Sternfeld, Afterimage Gallery, Dallas, TX
• 1987-1989: American Prospects: The Photographs of Joel Sternfeld, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, TX; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA; The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada
• 1989: Contemporary Photographs, Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York, NY
• 1991: Campagna Romana: The Roman Countryside, Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York, NY
• 1997: On This Site, Pace Wildenstein MacGill, Los Angeles, CA
• 2001: Stranger Passing, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
• 2001: Walking the High Line, Pace Wildenstein Gallery, New York, NY
• 2002: Treading on Kings: Protesting the G8 in Genoa, WhiteBox Art Center, New York, NY
• 2002-2003: Joel Sternfeld, The Photographers’ Gallery, London, United Kingdom
• 2004: American Prospects and Before, Luhring Augustine, New York, NY
• 2005: Sweet Earth: Experimental Utopias in America, Luhring Augustine, New York, NY
• 2008: The Geography of No Place: American Utopias, Buchmann Galerie, Berlin, Germany
• 2008: Oxbow Archive, Luhring Augustine, New York, NY
• 2009: Joel Sternfeld: On This Site, Buchmann Galerie, Berlin, Germany
• 2011: Joel Sternfeld – Farbfotografien seit 1970, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany.^[12]
• 2011-2012: C/O Berlin, Berlin, Germany
• 2011–2012: Joel Sternfeld – Color Photographs since 1970, Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, Netherlands.^[13]
• 2012: Joel Sternfeld – Color Photographs since 1970, Albertina, Wien, Austria.^[14]
• 2012: Joel Sternfeld: First Pictures, Luhring Augustine, New York, NY
• 2012: Joel Sternfeld: Campagna Romana, Buchmann Galerie, Berlin, Germany
• 2013-2014: Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA
• 2017: Joel Sternfeld: Colour Photographs 1977-1988, Beetles + Huxley, London, England
• 2017-2018: Joel Sternfeld: Stranger Passing / To Joseph Palmer, Buchmann Galerie, Berlin, Germany

• 1978: Guggenheim Fellowship.^[15]
• 1980: New York State Council for the Arts Creative Artist Public Service Fellowship.^[16]
• 1980: National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.^{[citation needed]}
• 1982: Guggenheim Fellowship.^[17]
• 1983: American Council for the Arts Emerging Artist Award
• 1985: Grand Prize, Higashikawa International Photo Festival, Japan.^{[citation needed]}
• 1987-1988: Shifting Foundation Fellowship
• 1990–91: Prix de Rome.^{[citation needed]}
• 2004: Citigroup Photography Prize, in association with The Photographers' Gallery, London.^{[citation needed]}
• 2013: Montgomery Fellowship, Dartmouth College.^{[citation needed]}
• 2017: Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society, Bath, UK.^{[citation needed]}

• Campagna Romana: The Countryside of Ancient Rome. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992. ISBN 978-0-67941-578-7.
• Hart Island. Zurich, Berlin, New York: Scalo, 1998. ISBN 978-3-931141-90-5. Includes a text by Melinda Hunt.
• Treading on Kings. Göttingen: Steidl, 2003. ISBN 978-3-88243-837-6.
• When It Changed. Göttingen: Steidl, 2008. ISBN 978-3-8652-1-278-8.
• Sweet Earth-Experimental Utopias in America. Göttingen: Steidl, 2008. ISBN 978-3-86521-124-8.
• Oxbow Archive. Göttingen: Steidl, 2008. ISBN 978-3-86521-786-8.
• iDubai. Göttingen: Steidl, 2010. ISBN 978-3-86521-916-9.
• First Pictures. Göttingen: Steidl, 2011. ISBN 978-3-86930-309-3.
• Walking the High Line. Göttingen: Steidl, 2012. ISBN 978-3-86521-982-4.
• On This Site: Landscape in Memorian. Göttingen: Steidl, 2012. ISBN 978-3-86930-434-2.
• Stranger Passing. Göttingen: Steidl, 2012. ISBN 978-3-86930-499-1.
• American Prospects. New York, NY: Distributed Art Publishers / Göttingen: Steidl, 2012. ISBN 978-3-88243-915-1.
• Rome After Rome. Göttingen: Steidl, 2018. ISBN 3958292631
• Landscape as Longing: Queens, New York. Göttingen: Steidl, 2017. ISBN 3958290329.
• Our Loss. Göttingen: Steidl, 2019. ISBN 978-3-95829-658-9.

Sternfeld's work is held in the following public collection:

• Museum of Modern Art, New York: 71 works (as of August 2023)^[18]
• J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
• Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England
• Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

• Joel Sternfeld's website
• Steidl Artist Page: Joel Sternfeld
• Steidl site on When It Changed
• Forbes article on Sternfeld's best-known photographs
• "The High Line" photographs by Sternfeld published in Cabinet Magazine
• Story behind 'Canyon Country, California, June 1983'
• 'Yochelson, Bonnie “The United Nations of Queens.” The New York Times.'
• 'Lipton, Shana Ting “Joel Sternfeld on His Classic American Prospects - and His New Work” British Journal of Photography.'