Lee Friedlander: Portraits

Gathers photographs of musicians, writers, wrestlers, artists, photographers, couples, parents and children, and people and their pets

Friedlander's portraits of subjects framed in everyday settings are jolting. At first glance, they look like ordinary snapshots from a family album. But look again, and you discover all sorts of incongruities, ironic echoes, lots of small insights that add up to a shock. Some well-known figures crop upCount Basie, Jean Genet, Walker Percy, Diane Arbus, Walker Evansbut most of the subjects are unknown people whom the viewer comes to know intimately. Painter R. B. Kitaj, in his foreword, compares these quietly devastating photos to the paintings of Pierre Bonnard: both Bonnard and Friedlander are deeply domestic, and both picture scenes that are a "cross between penny-plain and complexly interesting." A wry, wistful cross-section of American life by a photographer with no preconceptions unfolds in these 73 duotones. October 23
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Friedlander is considered to be one of the most important photographers working today. Together with Diane Arbus and Garry Winograd, with whom he shared a MOMA show in the mid-Sixties, he has strongly influenced a new generation of photographers. The reasons for that are evident in this collection. Though it is perhaps not his best work, there are some marvelous images here, characterized by both his sophisticated use of light and his original sense of composition. These portraits, taken between 1957 and 1984, include photographs of family, friends, and strangers, as well as such diverse personalities as Blaze Starr and Walker Percy. The painter R. J. Kitaj has written a particularly interesting and thoughtful foreword. Recommended for larger subject collections. Frank Schroth, Technology Training Assocs. Cambridge, Mass.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.