Lee Friedlander at the Cleveland Museum of Art
New York City, 1966 © Lee Friedlander
Friedlander
The Cleveland Museum of Art
Sunday, March 1–Sunday, May 31, 2009
11150 East Blvd
Cleveland, Ohio
(216) 421-7350
FREE
Now on view at the Cleveland Museum of Art, is a special exhibition focusing on the career of the legendary American photographer Lee Friedlander. The retrospective is organized by Peter Galassi, chief curator of photography at MoMA in New York, and gathers about 375 photographs plus special-edition books and portfolios that document his five-decade career.
In the early 1960s Friedlander became famous with off-balanced street photographs that made note of the complexity of the everyday American life. Through his photographs, Friedlander created a detailed portrait of contemporary American life. His images are communicative, packed with visual ideas, have a wicked sense of humor and the bizarre ability to compress multiple layers of meaning in random visual events.
In his attempt to communicate his visualization of what he calls “the American social landscape,” he takes us on a journey through detached images of urban life, store-front reflections, structures framed by fences, and posters and signs all combined to capture the look of modern life. This body of work also includes subjects such as portraits of musicians, self-portraits, landscapes, still lives, nudes, and studies of people at work that depict the diversity of contemporary urban America.
Lee Frielander has also been featured in the Fall 2007 issue of Aperture magazine.
Tags: Lee Friedlander, MoMA, Peter Galassi, urban life photography
