Westport, Connecticut, Lee Friedlander

Artwork Overview

born 1934
Westport, Connecticut, 1968
Where object was made: United States
Material/technique: gelatin silver print
Dimensions:
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 23.3 x 15.6 cm
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 9 3/16 x 6 1/8 in
Mat Dimensions (Height x Width): 19 x 14 in
Credit line: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Myron Orlofsky
Accession number: 1973.0016
Not on display

If you wish to reproduce this image, please submit an image request

Images

Label texts

Archive Label: In this photograph Friedlander plays with reflections and shadows, using them to mix evidence of his own body with the body shown here in an advertising placard for-what else?- Kodak film. Along with Garry Winogrand, Friedlander was the leader of a school of street photographers of the 1960s. These photographers wandered urban streets in search of subjects, catching off-hand moments without first looking through the view-finder or even aligning the camera with the horizontal. Their goal was to capture a scene in the very moment they saw it, without contemplation. It was this here-and-now quality that legitimated street photography as art within the aesthetics of the 1960s, which held direct, bodily experience as paramount. Street photography shared with Minimalism, Pop art, and Happenings not only immediacy, but also disregard for history, tradition, and anything else that could not be seen or felt.