Today we at last made it to the Lee Friedlander exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The works featured were from the MOMA collection (NYC). All were beautifully framed (I’m partial to good matting) in simple, but stylish brushed metal frames. I’m scouting for books on the man as we speak. What an eye. What vision. Truly spectacular.
The exhibition was organized in order of trade books/series Friedlander has published over the course of an amazing career that has spanned several decades. Portraits, landscapes, nudes. A fascinating mix of photographs ranging from fascinating to downright funny. The man sure has a sense of humor.
One photograph that caught my eye was a picture depicting a television, couch/living room and bathroom with a toilet bowl in the same frame. He achieved this shot with a mirror affixed on a door. What a perfect depiction of (American) life. Friedlander is famous for this kind of shot, a technique that includes a new version/vision of the same motif in a shot that otherwise would have just depicted the ordinary. He puts a new twist on just that ordinary version of reality and you can’t help but grin at some of the stuff the man comes up with. As I said, he sure has a sense of humor. This sense of humor, paired with a keen eye, made it an extremely worthwhile show for me.
The other characteristic that makes Lee Friedlander unique is how he takes what would be commonly considered a photographic error – poles in the middle of the picture obstructing faces, his own shadow included in a shot etc. – and turns it around and into a compositional feature. A feature that not only reveals his excellent eye, but also gives the photographs said twist I found so tremendously entertaining. I had to revisit his “self portrait” series several times to take it all in, which is photographed exactly in this fashion. A good example is his silhouette on the back of a woman walking in front of him. Or a multiple reflection in a restaurant or car window (not included in the self-portrait series).
A “who-am-I-to-judge” moment, however, were his nudes and some of his landscapes. Frankly, I don’t think I get quite a few of the landscapes. Very wiry and busy for the most part, and a sharp contrast to the compositions in his portraits and street scenes. Too complex for me. My brain isn’t wired that way, and let’s leave it at that. There was a striking one that featured the reflection of Japanese cherry blossoms in a pond with a fish as the central element, that I found rather intriguing. But as for the ones that are a beautifully depicted, but rather busy (think a lot of trees and branches and leaves etc.), I can’t process them as well.
The nudes I didn’t care for much, to tell you the truth. The same way I don’t care for many of Imogen Cunningham’s nudes, who otherwise is a much admired photographer. Very brutally lit, honest (and that would be his style I so admired in the portraits, right), but somehow they didn’t strike me the same way as the portraits. Maybe it’s because they have such a peep-show feel to them. Maybe it’s the way they were posed. I’ve made a promise to myself to revisit these, for the sole reason I like well-photographed nudes, so we’ll see.
Bottom line: if you have an opportunity to see either this exhibition or the one at NYC MOMA, I would encourage you to do so. As I said, I’m looking for more materials on him as we speak. And since I’m trying not to violate copyright, if you Google Lee Friedlander, you’ll find plenty of links to his work, such as http://www.mocp.org/collections/permanent/friedlander_lee.php or http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A2002.
Sofie Dittmann Check this out!, Photo Event, Photography General cleveland museum of art, exhibition, lee friedlander, photography
