Portfolios

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.

The landscape—especially the extravagantly varied landscape of the American West—has been a recurring subject for Friedlander. The artist frequently employs flash, even in daylight, to meld foreground and background. The resulting densely layered compositions draw the viewer into idiosyncratic qualities of the terrain.

Friedlader has joked, “I tend to photograph the things that get in front of my camera.” This includes his own family and friends, colleagues, and strangers. People are depicted in private spaces and at work, alone and in crowds, unguarded in front of the artist’s lens.