Stern's work is held in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston[1] and the Center for Creative Photography.
[3][4] Her mother was the daughter of Bernard Gimbel and her father was an attorney and the president of the Whitney Museum of American Art.
[citation needed] In 1977, Stern studied at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York City, but soon found herself at odds with a curriculum that was oriented toward photojournalism.
Dispossession (1990–’92) is a series of 12 composite works in which human skulls are set against a luminous white fabric, in counterpoint with Stern's face portrayed as a death mask beneath them.
In Veiled Still Lifes (1994–2003), Stern photographed vases behind a translucent black fabric, creating a dark, textured luminosity.
Five books of Stern's work have been published: Unveilings (1988), Dispossession (1995), Animus (2000), Veiled Still Lifes (2006) and Frozen Mystery (2010), which accompanied her retrospective exhibition at the Museo Fundación Cristóbal Gabarrón in Spain.