Galax, Virginia
Artist
Lee Friedlander
(American, b. 1934)
CultureAmerican
Date1962
MediumGelatin silver print
DimensionsOverall, Image: 7 3/8 × 11 in. (18.7 × 27.9 cm)
Overall: 11 × 14 7/8 in. (27.9 × 37.8 cm)
Overall, Mat: 16 × 20 in. (40.6 × 50.8 cm)
Overall: 11 × 14 7/8 in. (27.9 × 37.8 cm)
Overall, Mat: 16 × 20 in. (40.6 × 50.8 cm)
Credit LineMuseum purchase
Object number85.48
Not on view
Label TextLee Friedlander
American (b. 1934)
Galax, Virginia, 1962
Gelatin-silver print
Museum Purchase 85.48
Lee Friedlander has come to be regarded as one of the most significant contemporary photographers. His photographs of cityscapes, monuments, vegetation, social events, and industrial sites reveal a highly sophisticated vision presented in a seemingly haphazard fashion. Since 1967 when his work first appeared in the New Documents exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, he has helped to define the new photographic genre of "social landscape." His storefront reflections, which often include the photographer, expand and contract the picture plane into graduations of space. In the introduction to his 1970 monograph Self Portrait, he wrote:
"I suspect it is for one's self-interest that one looks at one's surroundings and one's self. This search is personally born and is indeed my reason and motive for making photographs. The camera is not merely a reflecting pool and the photographs are not exactly the mirror, mirror on the wall that speaks with a twisted tongue. Witness is borne and puzzles come together at the photographic moment which is very simple and complete. The mind-finger presses the release on the silly machine and it stops time and holds what its jaw can encompass and what the light will stain. That moment when the landscape speaks to the observer."
The Chrysler collection includes two Friedlander photographs.
Edited By: GLY
Edited Date: 11/07/2003Exhibition History"Photographs from the Chrysler Museum," The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA, Feb. 26 - April 23, 1989.
"The Portrait in America," The Alice R. and Sol B. Frank Photography Galleries, The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA, Jan. 26 - April 8, 1990.
"Silver Images: The Photography Collection at 25," Alice R. and Sol B. Frank Photo Galleries, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va., November 5, 2003 - August 2004.
Published ReferencesBrooks Johnson. _The Portrait in America_. The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA. 1990: pp. 8; 65, ill.
