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November 20, 2006
Lee Friedlander is widely regarded as one of the innovators in photography in the 1970s. This is an innovation that has its roots in the work of Robert Frank, Walker Evans, Eugene Atget and works the tension in the history of the tension between the painterly photograph and the snapshot.
Lee Friedlander, New York City, 1974 , Gelatin-silver print
Friedlander accepted the modern street in the city as it was, with its clutter and wires and explored the way it fragmented our vision. In Friedlander's images, surfaces are frequently broken, disrupted, or complicated; objects jut forward, obscuring others. Mirrors and windows reflect and refract events already in flux.
Lee Friedlander, Self portrait, Route 9W, New York, 1969.
In his series on TV images he represents only a moment of the action but it is enough to set the mood.
Lee Friedlander, Galax, Virginia, 1962, Gelatin-silver print
It is a bleak, lonely mood. People are absent. We are by ourselves in motel room.
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