Lee Friedlander

This article is about the photographer. For the film director, see Lee Friedlander (film director).

Lee Friedlander (born July 14, 1934) is an American photographer and artist. In the 1960s and 70s, working primarily with 35mm cameras and black and white film, Friedlander evolved an influential and often imitated visual language of urban "social landscape," with many of the photographs including fragments of store-front reflections, structures framed by fences, posters and street-signs.

Life and work

Friedlander studied photography at the Art Center College of Design located in Pasadena, California. In 1956, he moved to New York City where he photographed jazz musicians for record covers. His early work was influenced by Eugène Atget, Robert Frank, and Walker Evans. In 1960, the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation awarded Friedlander a grant to focus on his art and made subsequent grants in 1962 and 1977. Some of his most famous photographs appeared in the September 1985 Playboy, black and white nude photographs of Madonna from the late 1970s. A student at the time, she was paid only $25 for her 1979 set, and in 2009, one of the images fetched $37,500 at a Christie's Art House auction.

Working primarily with Leica 35mm cameras and black and white film, Friedlander's style focused on the "social landscape". His art used detached images of urban life, store-front reflections, structures framed by fences, and posters and signs all combining to capture the look of modern life.

In 1963, the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House mounted Friedlander's first solo museum show. Friedlander was then a key figure in curator John Szarkowski's 1967 "New Documents" exhibition, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City along with Garry Winogrand and Diane Arbus. In 1973, his work was honoured in Rencontres d'Arles festival (France) with the screening "Soirée américaine : Judy Dater, Jack Welpott, Jerry Uelsmann, Lee Friedlander" présentée par Jean-Claude Lemagny. In 1990, the MacArthur Foundation awarded Friedlander a MacArthur Fellowship.

Friedlander now works primarily with medium format cameras (e.g. Hasselblad Superwide). While suffering from arthritis and housebound, he focused on photographing his surroundings. His book, Stems, reflects his life during the time of his knee replacement surgery. He has said that his "limbs" reminded him of plant stems. These images display textures which were not a feature of his earlier work. In this sense, the images are similar to those of Josef Sudek who also photographed the confines of his home and studio.

In 2005, the Museum of Modern Art presented a major retrospective of Friedlander's career, including nearly 400 photographs from the 1950s to the present. In the same year he received a Hasselblad International Award. The retrospective exhibition was presented again in 2008 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). Concurrent to this retrospective, a more contemporary body of his work, America By Car, was displayed at the Fraenkel Gallery not far from SFMOMA. "America By Car" was on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City in late 2010.

He is the father of cellist Erik Friedlander, and Anna Friedlander.

Selected books

• E.J. Bellocq: Storyville Portraits. Photographs from the New Orleans Red-Light District, Circa 1912. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1970. Photographs reproduced from prints by Friedlander; preface by Friedlander.
• Self Portrait. New City, NY: Haywire Press, 1970.
• The American Monument. New York: Eakins Press Foundation, 1976. ISBN 0871300435.
• Lee Friedlander Photographs. New City, NY: Haywire Press, 1978.
• Factory Valleys: Ohio & Pennsylvania. New York, NY: Callaway Editions, 1982. ISBN 0935112049.
• Lee Friedlander Portraits. Boston: Little, Brown, 1985. ISBN 0821216023.
• Like a One-Eyed Cat: Photographs by Lee Friedlander, 1956-1987. New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with the Seattle Art Museum, 1989. ISBN 0810912740.
• Nudes. New York: Pantheon Books, 1991. ISBN 0679404848.
• The Jazz People of New Orleans. New York: Pantheon Books, 1992. ISBN 0679416382.
• Maria. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992. ISBN 1560982071.
• Letters from the People. New York: D.A.P/Distributed Art Publishers, 1993. ISBN 1881616053.
• Bellocq: Photographs from Storyville, the Red-Light District of New Orleans. New York: Random House, 1996. ISBN 0679449752. Photographs reproduced from prints by Friedlander.
• The Desert Seen. New York: D.A.P/Distributed Art Publishers, 1996. ISBN 1881616754.
• Viewing Olmsted: Photographs by Robert Burley, Lee Friedlander, and Geoffrey James. Montréal: Canadian Centre for Architecture, 1996. ISBN 0920785581. By Phyllis Lambert.
• American Musicians: Photographs by Lee Friedlander. New York: D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, 1998. ISBN 1564660567. By Friedlander, Steve Lacy, and Ruth Brown.
• Self Portrait, second edition. New City, NY: D.A.P./Fraenkel Gallery, 1998. ISBN 1881616967. By Friedlander and John Szarkowski.
• Lee Friedlander. San Francisco: Fraenkel Gallery, 2000. ISBN 188133709X.
• Lee Friedlander at Work. New York: D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, 2002. ISBN 1891024485.
• Stems. New York: D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, 2003. ISBN 1891024752.
• Lee Friedlander: Sticks and Stones: Architectural America. San Francisco: Fraenkel Gallery, 2004. ISBN 1891024973. By Friedlander and James Enyeart.
• Self Portrait, third edition. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2005. ISBN 0870703382. By Friedlander and John Szarkowski.
• Friedlander. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2005. ISBN 0870703439. By Peter Galassi.
• Cherry Blossom Time in Japan: The Complete Works. Fraenkel Gallery, 2006. ISBN 1881337200.
• Lee Friedlander: New Mexico. Santa Fe, NM: Radius Books, 2008. ISBN 9781934435113. By Friedlander, Andrew Smith, and Emily Ballew Neff.
• America by Car. San Francisco: Fraenkel Gallery, 2010. ISBN 9781935202080.

External links

• Lee Friedlander at the Museum of Modern Art
• Fraenkel Gallery represents Lee Friedlander
• Janet Borden, Inc. Friedlander's New York representatives
• Lee Friedlander's photogravures at Panopticon Gallery
• Lee Friedlander (American, 1934) on MutualArt.com
• Further articles, photographs and resources.
• Retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art
• Lee Friedlander’s nudes of Madonna
• "Selection of photographs by Lee Friedlander". Victoria and Albert Museum. http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/photography/photographerframe.php?photographerid=ph025. Retrieved 2007-06-16. 
• Illustrated Bibliography: Lee Friedlander