Friedlander

The hipster wit and graphic verve of Lee Friedlander's irreverent glimpses of the city street and tongue-in-cheek self-portraits of the 1960s delivered a bracing jolt to American photography. Since the early 1970s his mastery of craft, playful affection for tradition, and voracious curiosity have transformed that early style into a fluid stream of observation, ever more capacious, nimble, and sensuous. Working in extended series that he often makes into books - some two dozen so far - Friedlander has become one of the most prolific artists in photography's history. The considerable range of his work over the past five decades - including portraits, nudes, still lifes, and studies of people at work - is anchored in a uniquely vivid and far-reaching vision of the American scene.
Friedlander, published to accompany a major retrospective exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, generously surveys the entire range of the photographer's work to date in 764 plates presented as a unfolding series of family groups. Some groups are devoted to major projects - including Self Portrait (1970), The American Monument (1976), Portraits (1985), Nudes (1991), and Sticks & Stones: Architectural America (2004) - while others, rigorously organized by date, theme, and style, further enable readers to chart the evolution of an extraordinary rich career. The book's large pages accommodate telling juxtapositions as well as ample reproductions of Friedlander's square-format photographs of the past decade, when a change of cameras made all of his old problems new again and opened fresh paths of discovery. The plates conclude with a suite of landscapes made in the American West, published for the first time. At once magisterial and bizarre, these pictures attest to the undiminished vitality of Friedlander's eye.
In the book's main essay, Peter Galassi, the Museum's Chief Curator of Photography, offers the first in-depth account of Friedlander's career. Richard Benson, Dean of the Yale University School of Art, contributes a second essay telling the story of his own role in making Friedlander's books. The first detailed catalogue of Friedlander's books, special editions, and portfolios, along with a chronology and bibliography, conclude the volume.