MP/VISUAL RESEARCH - LEE FRIEDLANDER

Timothy Taylor Gallery has just shown America by Car, never heard of this gallery.  Silke told me.  I quite like this latest project by Lee Friedlander done in 1995-2009, amazing he is still active, and making good works!

Press Release from Timothy Taylor Gallery:

America By Car charts numerous journeys made by the photographer during the last decade across most of the fifty US states. Shot entirely from the interiors of rental cars, typically from the driverʼs seat, Friedlander makes use of side and rearview mirrors, windscreens, and side windows as framing devices for a total of 192 images.

In America By Car, Friedlander uses the quintessential icons of US culture - cars and the open road - to explore contemporary America, revisiting in the process many of the places and strategies that he has incorporated into his practice throughout his career.

Presented in the square-crop format that characterizes Friedlanderʼs more recent work, these images complicate and invigorate the most bereft of rural scenes. His desire to collapse and flatten out the three dimensional world parallels the means of cubist painting and recalls the collaging techniques of pop art. 

Also from the intro at Witney Museum of American Art

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.