Sign and significance

 

Approaching the vital work of Lee Friedlander, undoubtedly one the most influential photographer of the last century is equal to questioning the main scope of photographic representation, addressing a complex as immediate visual essay on it. As a matter of fact the American landscape of the Sixties and the Seventies told by Friedlander’s lens can be defined “social”, fragmented and chaotic as full of paradoxes and constant references to cultural issues whether open or concealed. And the language itself is nourished by the same fragmentation and by the same wealth. As we were facing a worn-out and well-known American postcard and be denied an instant later. Only superficially the represented places return known and recognized patterns, while these individual windows upon the so-called normality and everyday banality are lightning glances deeply imbued with uneasiness and disorientation. The compositional complexity is so concealed behind the apparent randomness of the shots and an equally apparent spatial constraint, while only a closer and enduring look reveals his labyrinthine progression. As if the depth of the plans was given by the conceptual specific weight of the image, by the concreteness of the meanings it carries, forcing the eye to compose a single visual unity and the mind to undermine preconceived certainties in search of new and personal clues.

 

 

Photo:

© Lee Friedlander. Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

www.fraenkelgallery.com

(click on the image at right for more pictures)