Lee Friedlander: Life Still - (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Lee Friedlander's latest monograph captures the irony and complexity of American life, past and present.

Since the 1960s, Lee Friedlander has created incisive, often witty photographs of the American social landscape, shaping our appreciation of the quirks, charms, and idiosyncrasies of everyday life. In his latest monograph, Life Still, he brings together rarely seen and never-before-published images from his vast archive alongside compelling new work, staging a visual dialogue between past and present. From fractured, disorienting reflections in shop windows and car mirrors to deadpan observations of domestic scenes and street signage, Friedlander's polychronic vision of American ubiquity is as comforting as it is alienating. Through the contradictions in the commonplace, Friedlander presents us with the enduring riddle of US culture: How does America seem, at once, so small and big, quiet and loud, phony and true? In Life Still, he reveals that these stubborn paradoxes of the American consciousness--the irony, humor, and self-conflict--remain as vivid today as they always have been.

About the Author

Lee Friedlander (born in Aberdeen, Washington, 1934) is a photographer celebrated for his keen ability to capture the intersections of public and private spaces, as well as the complexities of American life. Friedlander's work has been widely exhibited, including retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. His photographs are also included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and Tate, London, among others. Friedlander is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. His numerous monographs include Self-Portrait (1970), The American Monument (1976), and Sticks & Stones (2004). His work has been published in Aperture, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and Time.