Westport, Connecticut

Lee Friedlander, artist

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

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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.