ROBERT VON STERNBERG

Robert von Sternberg (b. 1939) is an American artist, photographer, university art educator, and philanthropist.

Even before entering grade school, von Sternberg had moved beyond finger painting and began drawing the real and imagined details of his childhood environment. These early renderings were inspired by the evocative illustrations in vintage editions of Andersen’s and Grimm’s fairy tales, as well as by images found in encyclopedias, the back-cover advertisements of National Geographic, and the photographs in Life and Look magazines.

In 1961, von Sternberg earned a degree in electronics, but after visiting a company specializing in his field, he realized an office career was not for him. He returned to university that same year, majoring in the Social Sciences. Around this time, he developed a deep passion for photography. His first rolls of black-and-white film, which he shot and processed himself, led to a series of images published in Surfer magazine and an offer for a staff photographer position.

After graduating from CSULB in 1965, von Sternberg accepted a secondary school teaching position. Two years later, he resigned and traveled through Europe and North Africa for 14 months. Upon his return to California, the photographs created during his travels quickly led to museum exhibitions, guest curatorships, and a six-page Art in America review of a Newport Harbor Art Museum exhibition in which he had been commissioned to participate.

In 1969, von Sternberg accepted a position teaching photography at a community college and became Chairperson of the Art Department in 1970. In 1971, he was appointed Professor in the School of the Arts at California State University, Northridge (CSUN), where he taught photography as a fine art until his retirement in 2006, when he was named Emeritus Professor.

Von Sternberg and his wife Patricia are avid travelers, particularly fond of road trips that explore the offbeat side of the American tourist tradition. His photographs rarely focus on iconic landmarks; instead, he seeks the visual possibilities of overlooked roadside attractions and unexpected moments. The surreal artificial lighting of the American night — the glow of gas stations, the red haze of a paper lantern, ceiling grids resembling constellations — often becomes the subject of his “definitive photographic images.” While camera-toting tourists sometimes appear in his frames, von Sternberg frequently captures scenes where human figures are distant or absent, imbuing his work with a sense of quiet yet charged stillness.

As of September 2025, approximately 1,955 of von Sternberg’s photographs have been acquired for the permanent collections of 258 institutions across 47 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., Australia, Canada, France, Great Britain, Ireland, Luxembourg, and Switzerland.