Lee Friedlander: Little Screens

23 April - 24 May 2020

Lee Friedlander: Little Screens

April 23 – May 24, 2020

Lee Friedlander is an American master of photography who has devoted himself to documenting what he calls "the social landscape" of this country. He traveled extensively from city to city for decades, casting his sharp eye for moments of mordant wit and startling juxtapositions everywhere he went. This itinerant working method led to an enormous amount of time spent in hotel rooms and other temporary residences.

All images © Lee Friedlander; Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, and Luhring Augustine, New York.
“The pictures on these pages are in effect deft, witty, spanking little poems of hate. They are the work of Lee Friedlander, one of the most accomplished and sharp-minded of the younger American photographers.”

– Walker Evans, Harper's Bazaar, 1963
Artworks
Lee Friedlander
Florida, 1963 / printed 2011
By the 1960s, televisions had arrived as a staple in these types of lodgings, and one could be found in every room. Friedlander's extensive catalogue of images that feature television screens is emblematic of his approach to image-making, rooted in the layering of forms and the revelation of pictures that occur within pictures.
Artworks
Lee Friedlander
Florida, 1963 / printed 1990s
Within the context of our current moment, the poetic irony of these photographs takes on a new meaning. At the time these photographs were made, the dramatic changes in society that the new technology of the television screen provided was extraordinary, and its subsequent ubiquity changed the nature of social interaction as well as the dissemination of information.
Installation views at The ADAA Art Show, New York, February 2020
Presented in collaboration with Fraenkel Gallery
“… a mysterious intersection of chance and attention that goes well beyond the existential surrealism of the ‘decisive moment’.”

– Lee Friedlander
Artworks
Lee Friedlander
New York City, 1963 / printed 2000s
Today, we use a whole host of different “little screens” – computers, tablets, smart phones, and even smart watches, which have continued the transformation of exchanges between people that televisions introduced. The onset of the COVID-19 and resulting global response has drastically altered our way of life, and we are collectively adjusting to new modes of interacting at a “social distance”, in which our primary method of connection with others is, at least for the moment, through a screen. Friedlander’s remarkably prescient images remain as thought-provoking and socially conscious now as they were in the 1960s.
Available Works
About the Artist

Lee Friedlander (b. 1934) began photographing the American social landscape in 1948 and is one of the most significant photographers of the 20^th and 21^st centuries. Friedlander’s work is collected in depth by major institutions including Art Institute of Chicago; George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among many others. In 2005, the artist was the subject of a major traveling retrospective and catalogue organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In fall 2019 Friedlander First Fifty, a compilation of his first 50 books was published by Powerhouse Books. Luhring Augustine’s first solo exhibition with Friedlander will take place in Fall 2020.

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Lee Friedlander: Little Screens

Lee Friedlander

Lee Friedlander

Installation views at The ADAA Art Show, New York, February 2020

Lee Friedlander

Available Works

About the Artist