
Lee FriedlanderNew York City

Lee FriedlanderPennsylvania

Lee FriedlanderLas Vegas

Lee FriedlanderPennsylvania

Lee FriedlanderFort Davis

Lee FriedlanderMontana

Lee FriedlanderConnecticut

Lee FriedlanderNebraska

Lee FriedlanderAlaska

Traversing the country in a rental car, the artist photographs the built and natural landscape directly from the driver’s seat. The car’s mirrors, doors, and windows act as frames for the images, which juxtapose steering wheels and dashboards with roadside bars, monuments, and mountain ranges.
Traversing the country in a rental car, the artist photographs the built and natural landscape directly from the driver’s seat. The car’s mirrors, doors, and windows act as frames for the images, which juxtapose steering wheels and dashboards with roadside bars, monuments, and mountain ranges.
Since the early 1960s, Friedlander has focused on the signs that inscribe the American landscape, from hand-lettered ads to storefront windows to massive billboards. Depicting these texts with precision and sly humor, Friedlander’s approach to America transcribes a sort of found poetry of commerce and desire.
Friedlander’s street is a metaphor for the American social landscape. Flattening a dynamic space into a photographic image, people and objects are reflected in windows and mirrors, framed by lamp posts and doors, creating new relationships and narratives.
Friedlander’s 1960s photographs show television screens in motel rooms and other anonymous spaces, transmitting images of pop icons, political figures, or minor celebrities. Called by Walker Evans “deft, witty, spanking little poems of hate,” the images reveal an emerging reality—the omnipresence of screens and the drone of television voices in an increasingly isolationist culture.