Lee Friedlander: Sticks And Stones: Architectural America

Rating:
Summary: FINALLY!
Review: For years -- probably decades -- I've been hoping to find a collection of Friedlander's great photos of the urban and suburban landscape. I'd buy almost any survey or monograph just to have the two or three examples that might be thrown in among the works of others, or among Friedlander's own wide range of subjects.

I'm delighted to say it was worth the wait. Page after beautifully printed page of these compositional masterpieces in large format -- it's almost too good to be true.

Like other photographers of "Main Street" or the strip, Friedlander finds beauty in unlikely places. Or maybe it's that he has FUN in unlikely places. His special contribution seems to be in creating a breathtaking (and often comical) tension between polar opposites: order/disorder; flat/deep; simple/complex; central/peripheral; deadpan/melodramatic; earnest/ironic; subtle/obvious; and so on. Friedlander has photographed many great jazz musicians; these photographs suggest that he has been influenced by their music, as he creates great riffs on the raw material he finds in the built environment.

Incidentally, I've seen this book in the Architecture section of some bookstores, but don't be fooled -- it is not really about buildings.