Friedlander

by Lee Friedlander

The catalogue for an exhibition of work by Lee Friedlander, held at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., December 11, 1976 - February 20, 1977. In celebration of the nation's bicentennial, the Corcoran commissioned eight American photographers to document Washington, D.C. The work was presented in a series of eight solo exhibitions, each with a catalogue. The artists were Friedlander, Jan Groover, Lewis Baltz, Robert Cumming, Roy DeCarava, John Gossage, Joe Cameron, and Anthony Hernandez. Photographs by Lee Friedlander; introductory essay by Jane Livingston; preface by Roy Slade. Limited to 3000 copies. Staple-bound self-wrappers; 24 pages; 15 full-page b&w illustrations; 8 x 8 inches. Exhibition checklist, biographical chronology, exhibition history, bibliography.

Genres: Photography

480 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2009

About the author

Lee 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.

Reviews

[Eric Cartier · Rating 5 out of 5]

A massive tome, full of hundreds of exquisitely printed images, preceded by an exhaustive, art historical/biographical/critical book-length essay on the American master. Absolutely essential seeing and reading for anyone moved and/or amused by Lee Friedlander's work. Also, it's likely the only time one will get to see (on page and in person) so many photos from the rare, elusive, expensive masterpiece The American Monument, unless one suddenly becomes independently wealthy and makes the rare books circuit. So borrow Friedlander if you can, from a city public library or a university library. Many thanks to my bibliophile friend Amanda for borrowing this copy for me from LSU Libraries.

[Paul H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I had sort of an interesting experience with Friedlander, by which I mean that I initially read this book in 2011, when I was first seriously diving into the history of fine art photography, and I thought it was literally the worst photography monograph I'd ever read. I had a similarly negative reaction to Duane Michals, Larry Clark, and a few others, but Friedlander was the epitome (to me) of the deadpan, badly-composed, wildly overrated work created by a group of photographers that were only famous because John Szarkowski (the extremely and tragically influential curator at MoMA) was a fan.

I can't recall any other case where I so completely changed my mind after just a few years; I think that doing my own photography had the strongest effect, where I could suddenly see the subtlety of what Friedlander was trying to do. Basically Friedlander is the equivalent of Serragghia or some ridiculously obscure wine that only oenophiles are into, and that only oenophiles can really explain the greatness of; his compositions often look banal or 'wrong' initially but there's almost always a subtle beauty underlying his work, a vague hint of eleven-dimensional chess, etc. Friedlander is definitely the polar opposite of someone like Ansel Adams, who is appealing to almost everyone, and also has some depth (a few photos are actually really good) but not too much depth, whereas Friedlander has ridiculous depth, and is a "photographer's photographer" in the sense that I don't think anyone who isn't really interested in photography would truly love his work.

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don't read the hype about this book. Look at the images and read Peter Galassi's wonderful biography. That's all you need. It isn't complicated.