Lee Friedlander: Chain Link - Hardcover

Friedlander, Lee

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3958292593 ISBN 13: 9783958292598

Publisher: Steidl, 2017

Synopsis

Lee Friedlander is celebrated for his ability to weave disparate elements from ordinary life into uncanny images of great formal complexity and visual wit. And few things have attracted his attention―or been more unpredictable in their effect―than the humble chain link fence. Erected to delineate space, form protective barriers and bring order to chaos, the fences in Friedlander’s pictures catch filaments of light, throw disconcerting shadows and visually interrupt scenes without fully occluding them. Sometimes the steel mesh seems as delicate as lace; at others it appears as tough as snakeskin. In this book’s 97 pictures, drawn from over four decades of work, it recurs as versatile, utilitarian and ubiquitous―not unlike the photographer himself.

[Friedlander] is the only American photographer working whose images have assured him a place among the photographers he admires: Atget, Evans, Cartier-Bresson, and Frank. Lewis Baltz

About this title

About the Author

Lee Friedlander was born in 1934 in Aberdeen, Washington. In 1948 he began to photograph seriously and by the 1960s had become widely recognized for his allencompassing portrayals of the American social landscape―a term he coined. Friedlander’s influential work has been the subject of many seminal exhibitions, including “New Documents” and “Mirrors and Windows,” both organized by John Szarkowski at the Museum of Modern Art, and more than 50 books, including Self Portrait (1970), The American Monument (1976), Factory Valleys (1982), Sticks and Stones (2004) and America By Car (2010).

From the Back Cover

In 2003, Frank Gohlke and Joel Sternfeld were commissioned to photograph one of the densest concentrations of ethnic diversity in the world, the borough of Queens in New York City. After more than a year of photographing everything from corner bodegas to the borough’s boundaries, Gohlke and Sternfeld had not only captured the complicated dynamic that sustains Queens and its myriad communities; they had also evolved a unique theory of landscape photography in which landscape is a visible manifestation of the invisible emotions of its inhabitants. The collection inherits the strength of each photographer’s eye. Gohlke’s Queens consists of streets, houses, fences, gardens, parklands, shorelines, and waste spaces, the terri - tory where human arrangement contends endlessly with the forces that undo it: unruly vegetation, weather, rot, decay, and the “creative destruction” of a voracious commercial culture. Sternfeld focuses on the indigenous shops, restaurants, mosques and temples that make a walk in Queens feel like a walk in Thailand, India or Peru―or all of them at once. Often tucked into homes or converted factories, these places signify a home country, or perhaps a home country that exists more in the mind than in actuality. In conjunction with an essay by the acclaimed writer Suketu Mehta, this book is a powerful instrument for understand - ing a landscape that seems to defy interpretation. Gohlke and Sternfeld successfully make the dizzying patchwork of Queens accessible and visible.

Edition details

• Publisher: Steidl
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3958292593
• ISBN 13: 9783958292598
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 102