Lee Friedlander

Lee Friedlander

Lee Friedlander, born in 1934, began taking photos of the American social landscape in 1948. Friedlander was able to organize a many visual objects in dynamic composition, Friedlander has made astonishing images among the chaos of city life, landscapes and countless other subjects. Friedlander is also recognized for a group of self-portraits he began in the 1960s, an exploration that he turned to again in the late 1990s, and published in a monograph by Fraenkel Gallery in 2000.

Fridlander mainly worked with Leica 35mm cameras and black and white film, his style focused on the "social landscape". His art used images of urban life, window reflections, structures framed by fences, posters and signs all combining to give the look of modern life.

He did many in this format/series, it gives each photo a different edge about it. Each photo has reflection and some even have a natural border from the car window, these add to the photos by making the viewer look at the image differently. He also uses good perspective, as in many of the images there are vanishing points, or forced perspective eg the car in the bottom left photo.