Lee Friedlander »
America By Car
Exhibition: 4 Sep – 28 Nov 2010
Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort Street
NY 10014 New York
+1-212-5703600
feedback@whitney.org
www.whitney.org
Wed-Mon 10:30-18 | Fri, Sat 10:30-22
Lee Friedlander: America By Car September 4 – November 28, 2010 Sondra Gilman Gallery/Howard and Jean Lipman Gallery Curated by Elisabeth Sussman Driving across most of the country's fifty states in an ordinary rental car, master photographer Lee Friedlander (b. 1934) applied the brilliantly simple conceit of deploying the sideview mirror, rearview mirror, the windshield, and the side windows as picture frames within which to record reflections of this country's eccentricities and obsessions at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Friedlander's method allows for fascinating effects in foreshortening, and wonderfully telling juxtapositions in which steering wheels, dashboards, and leatherette bump up against roadside bars, motels, churches, monuments, suspension bridges, essential American landscapes, and often Friedlander's own image. Presented in the square crop format that has dominated his work in recent series, and taken over the past decade, the images in America by Car are among Friedlander's finest, full of virtuoso freshness and clarity, while also revisiting themes from older bodies of work. Friedlander has been the recipient of numerous awards throughout his career. A major traveling retrospective of his work was organized in 2005 by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. He received the International Center of Photography's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006.