Learning with Lee Friedlander

Hi 😂

I’ve seen probably a good number of exhibits of Friedlander’s work in several places. I remember now one I watched in L’orangerie in Paris. It was years ago and I was with someone then who thought the prints were boring.

Of course his work is just in black and white and often about daily stories, instead of some other kind of spectacular documentary.

I have a few of his works in mind, self portraits, hotel rooms or street scenes and some others just refreshing my memory when watching them again.

This is one of them, appearing in any online search,

Despite the fact you can find it here cropped or in the original version

the title is just New York City, 1966 (Gelatin silver print. 5-3/4 x 8-11/16" Carl Jacobs Fund. MoMA)

Is a self portrait so?

Well, being the sun so low, it suggests to be a sunset time in one of NYC big avenues, probably easy to spot by a big apple inhabitant still now.

The fact the camera’s not in the shadow seems to me now a bit strange, because it was a horizontal shot (with a 50 mm lens?) and having it been at his chest height the frame would have been different.

But, the most interesting, what can we learn from that shot?

Well, compared with that other one I got right yesterday probably we can really learn from the master a lot.

My shadow’s there too, with the camera instead, the light’s good and the colors are good too. But the distance is rather longer here and my shadow’s only a shadow on the back of that lady. Instead of a self portrait.

By contrary the shadow in Fiedlander’s is actually a different someone, probably thought as a self portrait. Or maybe a subject in relation with that woman or that fur; the way the shadow’s hair mixes with that fur and woman’s hair is pretty interesting.

Perhaps the self portrait in mine isn’t in my shadow, but in the t-shirt orange’s smile. By other side there’s a nice pattern in both glances looking at something beyond the frame.

A kind of skeptical sense of humor, laconic maybe, is often present in his work. Not lacking in that photograph certainly…

Mine is of course different in my sample.

Hmmm is there a color humor versus a black and white one?

Making a similar crop to his with mine, things change a bit too. My shadow’s more my shadow, the game between me and Tshirt and their glances is pretty pronounced now.

Perhaps it’s something we do rather often and we don’t use to accept we do. But, why not?

Say, how bad is my photograph compared to Friedlander’s? Like, are colors helping or distracting?

Yep, that bright area made of fur plus woman hair against the mute head shade is really something compared to mine’s blond cascade showering my cap shadow. Yep, his street is far and lack of color and actually absent from the main subject and mine’s actually part of the whole. And, yep, mine’s made by me and not by Friedlander

Or, is just a silly comparison game?

More suggestions?