Lee Friedlander (Documentary)

Lee Friedlander in Aberdeen, Washington on July 14 1934.  Friedlander studied photography at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calafornia.  In 1956 he moved to New York CIty where he photographed jazz singers for there record covers.  Working mostly  with Leica 35mm cameras and black and white film, Friedlander main style focued on social landscape.  His photographs used detached images images in urban life, store-reflections, structures framed by fences, posters and signs all combining to capture the look of modern life.  In 1963 he had his first solo exhibition at the International Musuem of Photography at George  Eastman House.  Freidlander now works with medium format cameras like Hasselblad Superwide.  Freidlander suffered with arthritis with made it hard for him to carry on with his photography so with the little he did he photographed his surrounding as much as possible.  His book 'Stems'  reflects his around the time of his knee replacment surgery and says that his limbs remind him of plant stems.  These images display textue which were not a feature of his earlier work.

You can tell straight away that this is a Friedlander images because of the style because he likes to capture images of everyday life and this is what this image is, it looks like a cafe and you can see the two people in the window and they look completely oblivious that they are being photographed, another style you can tell is the reflection of the other shops in the window.  Even though the image is black and white you can tell that it is natural lighting because he is outdoors and you can see the reflections.  The image look like it was taken across the other side of the road and then used a zoom lens to capture the facial expression. The older man looks like the owns the shop because he is dressed professionally and he may be looking outside to see how nice it is or he could be looking to see if any customers are coming, then the kid could be a customer or he could be a relative of the owner and he looks bored.  You see the Coca Cola advert in the window and its shows how long Coca Cola has been around and how widely recognised it was even then.