Lee Friedlander: picture books
Lee Friedlander, Friedlander First Fifty”, Introduction par Giancarlo T. Roma. PowerHouse Books, New-York, 2020
Lee Friedlander was born in 1934 in Aberdee, Washington, into a family whose father’s side fled anti-Semitic persecution in Nazi Germany, and whose mother’s side came from Finland. After his mother’s death, Lee Friedlander was taken in by a farming family near his hometown for seven years. He is reunited with his family, including his father, a stockbroker, during the holidays.
His passion for photography goes back to childhood when, at the age of five, he discovered the darkroom and the development of photography until it was gradually revealed on a sheet of paper. This book contains photographs from each of the first fifty books as well as descriptions and information about their publication with interviews with Friedlander and his wife. The result is a multifaceted, yet most personal and sincere look at the life and career of the photographer.
In his career spanning seven decades, Friedlander has produced an unparalleled body of photographic work apparently documenting every aspect of the American “social landscape” through the production of books that are more important to him than exhibitions. “Books are my medium,” Friedlander said. And the full range of subjects can be found here: jazz musicians, factory workers, monuments, television screens, self-portraits, nudes, street photographs and landscapes. He captures America as broadly as Eugène Atget did in France. Friedlander himself you an admiration for his marvellous vision of the world.
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