This most recent series by Joel Sternfeld is comprised of 25 small, jewel-like portraits of people with beards — but it is not the beards per se that are the focus of this work. The pictures are dedicated to Joseph Palmer, a nineteenth century New England farmer who grew a long and flowing beard at a time when beards were utterly socially unacceptable.

A historic text written by Stewart Holbrook in 1944 runs sequentially at the bottom of Sternfeld’s images, thus making this another work in the many text/image bodies of work that he has continued to create (On This Site (exhibited at Buchmann Galerie in 2009), Treading on Kings, When it Changed, Sweet Earth). Each participant in To Joseph Palmer was told the story of this crusader for freedom of speech and each agreed to participate in the project to honor Palmer and the right of all people to be free of persecution because of their harmless beliefs and practices.