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Lee Friedlander
A new, up-to-date retrospective on photography legend Lee Friedlander One of the masters of contemporary photography, Lee Friedlander has dedicated his career to the documentation of everyday life in the United States. His images are characterized by a composition that utilizes the urban geometry of storefronts and street signs―and later car windows and telephone poles―as a framing technique. This catalog, published in conjunction with a retrospective organized by the Fundación MAPFRE in Madrid, surveys the wide scope of Friedlander’s career from the 1960s to today. High-quality reproductions of all of the exhibited works are supplemented by text written by curator Carlos Gollonet and photographer Nicholas Nixon.
The volume serves as a comprehensive guide to Friedlander’s body of work, with personal insight provided through an interview between Maria Friedlander and gallery director Jeffrey Fraenkel, as well as a chronology of the artist’s life by his grandson Giancarlo T. Roma.
Lee Friedlander was born in Aberdeen, Washington, in 1934, and studied photography at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. In 1956 he moved to New York City, which quickly became both the setting and subject of the majority of his work. Friedlander was represented alongside Diane Arbus and Garry Winogrand in the 1967 New Documents exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, now understood as a landmark event in American documentary photography. Friedlander still lives and works in New York, and is represented by the Fraenkel Gallery.
The volume serves as a comprehensive guide to Friedlander’s body of work, with personal insight provided through an interview between Maria Friedlander and gallery director Jeffrey Fraenkel, as well as a chronology of the artist’s life by his grandson Giancarlo T. Roma.
Lee Friedlander was born in Aberdeen, Washington, in 1934, and studied photography at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. In 1956 he moved to New York City, which quickly became both the setting and subject of the majority of his work. Friedlander was represented alongside Diane Arbus and Garry Winogrand in the 1967 New Documents exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, now understood as a landmark event in American documentary photography. Friedlander still lives and works in New York, and is represented by the Fraenkel Gallery.
- GenresPhotography
384 pages, Hardcover
Published February 2, 2021
6 people want to read
About the author
Lee Friedlander
110 books12 followersLee Friedlander is a seminal American photographer known for his innovative images of city streets. Often featuring candid portraits of people, signs, and reflections of himself in store front windows, Friedlander’s street photography captures the unexpected overlaps of light and content in urban landscapes. “I’m not a premeditative photographer,” he has said. “You don’t have to go looking for pictures. The material is generous. You go out and the pictures are staring at you.”
Born on July 14, 1934 in Aberdeen, WA, he studied at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena before moving to New York in 1956. Influenced by the work of Eugène Atget and Walker Evans, he attempted to see things as if a step removed, spontaneously reacting to all the potential images in front of him. Along with Diane Arbus and Garry Winogrand, Friedlander was represented in the historic “New Documents” exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in 1967, curated by John Szarkowski. He went on to publish his acclaimed photobook The American Monument in 1976. More recently, in 2010, Friedlander published America by Car, a book which was accompanied by an exhibition at the Whitney Museum and featured a series of photos that were taken on road trips from behind the wheel of rental cars. The artist continues to live and work in New York, NY. Today, his photographs are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, among others.
Born on July 14, 1934 in Aberdeen, WA, he studied at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena before moving to New York in 1956. Influenced by the work of Eugène Atget and Walker Evans, he attempted to see things as if a step removed, spontaneously reacting to all the potential images in front of him. Along with Diane Arbus and Garry Winogrand, Friedlander was represented in the historic “New Documents” exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in 1967, curated by John Szarkowski. He went on to publish his acclaimed photobook The American Monument in 1976. More recently, in 2010, Friedlander published America by Car, a book which was accompanied by an exhibition at the Whitney Museum and featured a series of photos that were taken on road trips from behind the wheel of rental cars. The artist continues to live and work in New York, NY. Today, his photographs are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, among others.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 15, 2023
An informative essay, an interview with Friedlander's wife, and over 300 pages of well-reproduced, mostly black-and-white photographs. The photos are generally okay, with maybe a dozen really good ones. Neither the essay nor the photos helped me understand why Friedlander is held in such high regard.
Displaying 1 of 1 review