Lee Friedlander

Lee Friedlander was born in 1934 in Aberdeen, Washington. He began photographing in 1948 because of a “fascination with the equipment,” in his words. Working primarily with Leica 35mm cameras and black and white film, Friedlander's style focused on the "social landscape". His art used detached images of urban life, store-front reflections, structures framed by fences, and posters and signs all combining to capture the look of modern life. He later attended the Art Center School in Los Angeles to become a professional photographer, but soon left. He moved to New York in 1956 and began freelancing. As he sought out magazine assignments, he eventually met a group of photographers who would change his life: Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand, Louis Faurer, Helen Levitt, Richard Avedon, and Walker Evans. Friedlander has been awarded John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowships and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. His work has been widely exhibited and is included in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, among other international collections. The Museum of Contemporary Photography exhibited his series At Work and Sticks and Stones in 2005. Additionally, Friedlander is credited with preserving the work of New Orleans photographer E.J. Bellocq. Friedlander now works primarily with medium format cameras (e.g. Hasselblad Superwide). While suffering from arthritis and housebound, he focused on photographing his surroundings.

 By Sireno