Joni Sternbach is an American artist, photographer, and filmmaker. Over the course of her career, her work has explored a variety of themes, including domesticity and the family, and sexuality and the body. Issues of gender, identity and feminism are the most critical themes in her work from the 1980s-1990s, where the female figure is the central voice.

Sternbach has experimented with a variety of photographic media and is best known for her series Surfland, a collection of wet plate collodion, tintype portraits of surfers, made around the globe. A tintype is a wet plate process that dates back to the 1850s. A plate of iron is coated with dark bitumen, sensitized with a silver salt solution and exposed in a large-format camera. It’s a one-of-a-kind, nearly instant photograph—in effect, a Polaroid. Sternbach develops the image right there on the sands of Australia, England, France and both coasts of the United States. The hand-poured technique drenches the work in tactile details, rich tones and a weathered nostalgia. Echoing traditions of anthropological photography, the work is a celebration and chronicle of modern surf culture.