Exhibitions | Lee Friedlander | Fraenkel Gallery San Francisco Photography Gallery Wed, 04 Sep 2024 20:03:25 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.1 56972082 Lee Friedlander by the Book  https://fraenkelgallery.com/exhibitions/explore-lee-friedlander-by-the-book Fri, 07 Apr 2023 21:39:29 +0000 https://fraenkelgallery.com/?post_type=fraenkel_exhibition&p=79778 On the occasion of the new monograph Lee Friedlander Framed by Joel Coen, we’re taking a closer look at the artist’s illustrious career by the books that have defined him. From motel television sets to members of his family, Friedlander has explored and often revisited various elements. Only in retrospect, as the artist explains, do the photographs […]

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]]> On the occasion of the new monograph Lee Friedlander Framed by Joel Coen, we’re taking a closer look at the artist’s illustrious career by the books that have defined him. From motel television sets to members of his family, Friedlander has explored and often revisited various elements. Only in retrospect, as the artist explains, do the photographs become books: “I end up with a box of pictures and I say, ‘Well, there’s enough here for a book.’” Yet the many publications under Friedlander’s name—more than fifty and counting—are not merely thematized collections; they are also sequenced studies on the forms of photography and the pleasures of looking.

Thirty years after Friedlander’s pivotal 1970 publication, Self Portrait, the artist released another collection of more recent images focused on himself. In a 1994 self-portrait made in Tokyo, he leans into his own shadow, which approaches the camera’s silhouette and creates a funny feedback loop, where the device looks back upon its operator. What better title for the 2000 publication than the name of its subject and author: Lee Friedlander.

Black and white photograph of a seated man taking a silhouetted self portrait with stark shadows
Tokyo, 1994
gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 inches (sheet) [50.8 x 40.6 cm]

Inspired by Walker Evans’s description of Friedlander’s photographs as “deft, witty, spanking little poems of hate,” The Little Screens collects photographs of television screens in motels and unassuming rooms across America. Cultural icons, political figures, and minor celebrities look out from the frames of their newfound, mechanized bodies. Here, the spectacle of television meets the American mundane in the advent of the information age. 

Black and white photograph of a television set with framed photographs and porcelain figurines
Aloha, Washington, 1967
gelatin silver print, 7 x 11 inches (sheet)
Black and white photograph of a small television set by a closet door with a white button up hanging on the door
Nashville, 1963
gelatin silver print, 14 x 11 inches (sheet) [35.6 x 2.79 cm]

Though the title of Friedlander’s 2004 book, Family, states simply who are its primary subjects, the sequence offers much more than just photographs of the artist’s wife, two children, and two grandchildren. It serves as an archive of familial bonds, in which viewers find their own intimate connections.

Black and white photograph of a seated figure on grass next to a standing figure seen from waist down
Maria, Minneapolis, 1966
gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 inches (sheet) [27.9 x 35.6 cm]
Black and white photograph of figure laying in bed with their hands over their face
Maria Friedlander, New City, New York, 1971
gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 inches (sheet) [27.9 x 35.5 cm]

Venturing beyond his iconic landscapes of the American West, Apples and Olives brings together apple trees photographed in New York State and olive trees photographed in France, Italy, and Spain, from 1997 to 2004. Enchanted by their beauty, Friedlander often photographed trees from within their sprawling layers. As a result, the branches stretch out and around both artist and viewer alike.

Black and white photograph of a leafless tree covered in snow
New City, New York, 2003
gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 inches (sheet) [50.8 x 40.6 cm]

Whether under a thick blanket of wintry snow or full with leaves and fruit at the end of summer, the apple trees in New City, New York test Friedlander’s skilled compositions with their density of form.

Black and white photograph of a verdant apple tree with a ladder
New City, New York, 2003
gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 inches (sheet) [50.8 x 40.6 cm]

Continuing the arboreal theme of his earlier publication, Friedlander’s Cherry Blossom Time in Japan: The Complete Works presents the culmination of four trips to explore the yearly celebration. Choosing black and white over color refocuses viewers’ attention to the complex compositions and contrasting tones.

Black and white photograph of trees reflections from a pond with floral debris on rocks
Tokyo, 1979
gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 inches (sheet) [27.9 x 35.5 cm]
Black and white photograph of tall shrubs with flowers and dew
Kyoto, 1977
gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 inches (sheet) [27.9 x 35.6 cm]

In 2010, Friedlander stumbled upon a series of forgotten images made on commission in 1964, when the then up-and-coming photographer was hired by Harper’s Bazaar to photograph the much anticipated new car models of that year. They were, in the end, never published by Harper’s, but The New Cars 1964 relishes in the rather humorous story of their making.

Black and white photograph of a car dealership lot on a sunny day
Detroit, 1963
gelatin silver print, 14 x 11 inches (sheet) [35.6 x 27.9 cm]

Rather than picture the new cars in seductive locales, Friedlander had them delivered around Detroit to parking lots near burger joints, cheap furniture stores, beauty parlors, and even a used-car lot. His focus was on the strange mundanity of the American landscape, despite the allure of the new. As Friedlander asks, “Can you imagine a new car looking like an old car in a service station? And then the same car being in an ad with luscious young people around it?”

Black and white photograph of a man taking a photograph of his reflection from the exterior of a storefront window
New York City, 1963
gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 inches (sheet) [27.9 x 35.5 cm]

Featuring 100 photographs taken between 1958 and 2016, Dog’s Best Friend traces Friedlander’s long-running fascination with dogs. “To run into dogs doing tricks is a real piece of luck. Jumping up or walking on their hind legs,” explains Friedlander, “it’s irresistible.”

Black and white photograph of a women in a black and white polka dot dress seated in front seat of car with two large Dalmatians in the back
Los Angeles, California, 1970
gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 inches (sheet) [27.9 x 35.6 cm]

We find dogs playing in parks, sitting in cars, or waiting, as in Washington, D.C., 1962, to be framed and photographed. In typical Friedlander fashion, the images are both lighthearted and profound, speaking not only to the special qualities of his canine subjects, but also to the human condition motivating his work.

Black and white photograph of an art store's front window with a dog seated within a frame
Washington, D.C., 1962
gelatin silver print, 14 x 11 inches (sheet) [35.6 x 27.9 cm]

This collection of Friedlander books and images is inspired by Friedlander First Fifty, published by SPQR Editions and Haywire Press. We are indebted to Giancarlo Roma for his support. 

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]]> 79778 Lee Friedlander Framed by Joel Coen https://fraenkelgallery.com/exhibitions/lee-friedlander-framed-by-joel-coen Tue, 21 Mar 2023 18:09:31 +0000 https://fraenkelgallery.com/?post_type=fraenkel_exhibition&p=79566 Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to announce Lee Friedlander Framed by Joel Coen, an exhibition of Friedlander’s photographs curated by the widely acclaimed filmmaker. Rather than focusing on a single subject or period, Coen’s selection concentrates on Friedlander’s singular approach to composition. Through the approximately 45 images in the exhibition Coen surveys the range of Friedlander’s […]

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]]> Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to announce Lee Friedlander Framed by Joel Coen, an exhibition of Friedlander’s photographs curated by the widely acclaimed filmmaker. Rather than focusing on a single subject or period, Coen’s selection concentrates on Friedlander’s singular approach to composition. Through the approximately 45 images in the exhibition Coen surveys the range of Friedlander’s 60+ year career, bringing many lesser-known images into the equation. The selection evidences an unexpected affinity between Friedlander and Coen, both of whose work explores the sly power of images. A new hardcover publication, with an introduction by Coen and an afterword by the actor Frances McDormand, accompanies the exhibition. In New York, Luhring Augustine will host a concurrent presentation of Friedlander’s photographs, from May 13 to July 28.

Black and white photograph of woman cleaning in a window of a diner to the right of a poster of a dancing woman and the word "ecstasy"
Cincinnati, Ohio, 1963
gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches (sheet) [40.6 x 50.8 cm]
Lee Friedlander, Jeffrey Fraenkel, Joel Coen, and Frances McDormand review prints by Lee Friedlander

Friedlander, Coen, and McDormand, admirers of each other’s work, met in the spring of 2022 at Friedlander’s home outside of New York City. During the day-long visit the artists studied hundreds of photographs, ultimately leading to the selection that constitutes the book and exhibition.

Black and white photograph of a car parked next to a building facade and window in which a painting of a man in a suit stares in the direction of the car
Detroit, 1963
gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 inches (sheet) [27.9 x 35.6 cm]

Coen’s selection focuses on photographs that are dense and off-kilter, often bisected by stop signs and utility poles, car doors and windshields, trees and shadows. “As a filmmaker, I liked the idea of creating a sequence that would highlight Lee’s unusual approach to framing—his splitting, splintering, repeating, fracturing, and reassembling elements into new and impossible compositions,” Coen writes.

Black and white photograph of a painting on a striped wall with chair and open door
Sweden, 2005
gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 inches (sheet) [50.8 x 40.6 cm]
Black and white photograph of two roads as viewed from bridge
Dallas, 1977
gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 inches (sheet) [27.9 x 35.6 cm]

Lee Friedlander Framed by Joel Coen will be on view at both Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco, and in New York at Luhring Augustine (May 13 to July 28). Both exhibitions will be accompanied by a special projection created by Coen, sequencing Friedlander’s images in unexpected and revealing ways. The book that accompanies the exhibition is published by Fraenkel Gallery and includes an expanded selection of 70 works. It will be available on both galleries’ websites.

Joel Coen Reframes Lee Friedlander — In a special "flip book" film created by Joel Coen, the filmmaker sequences Lee Friedlander’s images in unexpected and revealing ways.
Duration: 00:03:43 | Release Date: May 2023
Black and white photograph of the back of a street sign in line with a pyramid shaped building
Memphis, 2003
gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 inches (sheet) [40.6 x 50.8 cm]

Fraenkel Gallery will host a public reception with Lee Friedlander and Joel Coen on Saturday, May 6, from 2-4pm. Luhring Augustine will host a reception with both artists in New York on Saturday, May 13.

Black and white photograph of building exterior with window reflecting the view of homes on a hill
Victor, Colorado, 2001
gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 inches (sheet) [50 x 40.6 cm]

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]]> 79566 FOG Design+Art https://fraenkelgallery.com/exhibitions/fog-design-art-2023 Sat, 03 Dec 2022 22:36:26 +0000 https://fraenkelgallery.com/?post_type=fraenkel_exhibition&p=78642 Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to return to FOG Design+Art with iconic works by Nan Goldin, Robert Adams, Carrie Mae Weems, Eadweard Muybridge, Diane Arbus, and Lee Friedlander, among others, along with new work by Wardell Milan and Richard T. Walker, and Hiroshi Sugimoto’s sleek sculptural nod to Constantin Brancusi. Nan Goldin is the subject of All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, the award-winning 2022 […]

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]]> Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to return to FOG Design+Art with iconic works by Nan Goldin, Robert Adams, Carrie Mae Weems, Eadweard Muybridge, Diane Arbus, and Lee Friedlander, among others, along with new work by Wardell Milan and Richard T. Walker, and Hiroshi Sugimoto’s sleek sculptural nod to Constantin Brancusi.

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Color portrait of woman looking out through the window of a moving train, blurred tracks visible outside
Nan Goldin, Self-portrait on the train, Boston – New Haven, 1997
pigment print, 32 x 32 inches (framed) [82 x 82 cm], edition of 15

Nan Goldin is the subject of All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, the award-winning 2022 film directed by Laura Poitras, which follows the artist’s life and her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the U.S. opioid crisis. The artist has often pictured herself, documenting her journey with all its pleasure and pain.

Black and white photograph of the front of a suburban home at night, with two chairs on the front porch and the home interior visible through the window.
Robert Adams, Longmont, Colorado, ca. 1980
gelatin silver print, 14 x 11 inches (sheet) [35.6 x 27.9 cm]

Robert Adams’s celebrated nocturnal landscapes record the newly developed suburbs near his former home along the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. Made using only the light he encountered on his walks, the images are quiet and dreamy.

Color photograph of a home interior with three armchairs and piano
William Eggleston, Memphis, Tennessee, 1971-1973
dye-transfer print, 15-7/8 x 20 inches (sheet) [40.3 x 50.8 cm]

Memphis, where William Eggleston was born, is a central subject for the photographer. Writing in William Eggleston’s Guide, John Szarkowski described his images of the city as “sharply incised, formally clear, fictive, and mysteriously purposeful.” His photographs, Szarkowski wrote, endowed the “least pretentious of raw materials with ineffable dramatic possibilities.”

Black and white photograph of a shadow silhouette against a shrub near a motel
Lee Friedlander, Montana, 1977
gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 inches (sheet) [27.9 x 35.5 cm]

Lee Friedlander has photographed his own shadow throughout his career. Imposed over another person or playfully projected onto natural elements, he inserts himself into the scene his camera records—the photographer’s version of breaking the fourth wall.

A black, grey, and white artwork painted on a semi-wrinkled reflective surface, encased in a black frame
Wardell Milan, In a land of great sunshine, No.1, 2022
acrylic, aerosol paint, marker, oil pastel, cut-and-paste paper, metalized polyethylene on board, 48-3/4 x 81-3/4 inches (framed) [123.8 x 207.6 cm]

When Wardell Milan began purchasing emergency blankets, he was initially attracted to their reflective surface. “After the height of the pandemic and the mass Black Lives Matter movements—as well as the on-going migrant crisis,” he writes, “my thoughts around the idea of refuge, liberation, and shelter were (and continue to be), amplified.” The series coalesces around the idea of creating “safe landscapes/safe spaces,” paintings where “anyone in need can find escape and solace.” In the silvery surfaces of the works, the viewer’s own reflection becomes part of the environment. 

Color photograph of decaying poppies in a small glass on wood plinth
Richard Learoyd, Largest poppies, 2022
unique Ilfochrome photograph, 52-1/8 x 50-7/8 inches (framed) [132.4 x 129.2 cm]
Color photograph of wooden clotheslines protruding from still water beneath a cloud streaked sky.
Richard Misrach, Submerged Clothesline, Salton Sea, 1983
pigment print, 20 x 24 inches (sheet & mount) [50.8 x 61 cm], edition of 25

Richard Misrach began his ongoing Desert Cantos series in 1979, exploring the southwest American desert landscape as a wild and primordial place while recording the impact of our human presence on it. As the artist explains, “You look at landscape, but it’s not really landscape, it’s a symbol for our country, it’s a metaphor for our country.”

Two horizontal rows of vertical black-and-white photographs of two young men boxing
Eadweard Muybridge, Wrestling, Graeco-Roman, 1887
collotype, 19 x 24 inches (sheet) [48.3 x 61 cm]

This sequence of images is part of Animal Locomotion, Eadweard Muybridge’s ambitious photographic project that aimed to represent human and animal motion rendered across time. The series has influenced generations of artists, and inspired scientific and photographic innovation, including motion picture technology.

Color image of a metal spiral sculpture near a black and white photograph of lightening striking framed in metal
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Mathematical Model 004: Dini’s surface: A Surface of Constant Negative Curvature Obtained by Twisting A Pseudosphere, 2006
aluminum, iron, 119 x 9 x 9 inches (overall, approx.) [302.3 x 22.9 x 22.9 cm], unique

Hiroshi Sugimoto works in metal to produce mathematical models, following the tradition of forms envisioned by mathematicians to give substance to geometric ideas. “I have attempted to transform mathematical equations into tangible objects,” he has written about the works, which are created using a computer and advanced machining tools to sculpt each form.

Black and white photograph of lighting striking framed in metal frame
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Lightning Fields 232, 2009
gelatin silver print, 71-3/4 x 60 inches (framed) [182.3 x 152.4 cm], edition of 5

Sugimoto’s Lightning Fields draw from both Benjamin Franklin’s and Michael Faraday’s pioneering electricity research and William Fox Talbot’s discovery of calotype photography, applying an electrical charge directly to film to create powerful, elemental images.

Black and white photograph of a person in a suit bowing wearing an elephant mask framed in black
Carrie Mae Weems, Missing Link (Justice), from The Louisiana Project, 2003
pigment print, 40 x 29 inches (framed) [101.6 x 73.6 cm], edition of 6

In Carrie Mae Weems’s Missing Link series, the artist delves into the racist histories of New Orleans Mardi Gras traditions. Dressed in a black suit, white gloves, and an animal mask, the artist alludes to a collection of costume design drawings for the 1873 Comus Mardi Gras Parade, originally titled The Missing Links to Darwin’s Origin of Species.

Color image of a color photograph of a cloudy sky with shades of pink and blue and a rock resting on frame on white background
Richard T. Walker, after thought #1, 2022
pigment print in artist’s frame, modified rock, 24 x 36 inches (overall) [61 x 91.4 cm], edition of 2

Working in vast, dramatic landscapes or in the studio, Richard T. Walker explores human connections to the natural world. By joining his photograph of the sky with a cut stone culled from the mountainous landscape beneath, Walker reorders the elements of his environment. The result is a playful engagement with the conventions of landscape photography, questioning our emotional attachments to its rocky peaks and endless horizons.

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]]> 78642 Paris Photo https://fraenkelgallery.com/exhibitions/explore-paris-photo-2022 Thu, 06 Oct 2022 18:01:42 +0000 https://fraenkelgallery.com/?post_type=fraenkel_exhibition&p=78110 Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to return to Paris Photo with works by Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Lee Friedlander, Peter Hujar, Richard Learoyd, Christian Marclay, Wardell Milan, Richard Misrach, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Carrie Mae Weems, Garry Winogrand and others. Christopher Ethelbert Cheyne operated a photographic studio in Hampton, Virginia, starting in 1894. His subjects included local businesses and family portraits, and in 1909, he photographed the […]

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]]> Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to return to Paris Photo with works by Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Lee Friedlander, Peter Hujar, Richard Learoyd, Christian Marclay, Wardell Milan, Richard Misrach, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Carrie Mae Weems, Garry Winogrand and others.

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Detail of a color photograph of a graduating class
Hampton Institute Graduating Class, (detail)

Christopher Ethelbert Cheyne operated a photographic studio in Hampton, Virginia, starting in 1894. His subjects included local businesses and family portraits, and in 1909, he photographed the graduating men and women of the Hampton Institute (now Hampton University), a historically Black university founded in 1868. The Hampton Institute was the subject of a book published by the Museum of Modern Art in 1966, featuring Frances Benjamin Johnston’s photographs of the school and its students, commissioned for the Paris Centennial Exposition of 1900.

Black and white photograph of a seated woman on a bed with handwriting reading 'Nora' beneath photograph
Diane Arbus, A Puerto Rican housewife, N.Y.C. 1963
gelatin silver print, titled and outlined by Diane Arbus in ink, 10 x 10-7/8 inches (sheet) [25.4 x 27.6 cm]

This print, made by Arbus between 1963 and 1965, includes a hand-drawn border with the name of the subject inscribed below. The image was included in the landmark exhibition New Documents, at the Museum of Modern Art in 1967.

Color photograph depicting a woman holding a gun in midair with explosion behind framed in black frame
Martine Gutierrez, Hit Movie Poster, 2022
chromogenic print, 43-1/2 x 73-1/4 inches (framed) [109.8 x 186.0 cm], edition of 5

“All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl,” according to the French New Wave film director Jean Luc Godard. Known for her complex critiques of popular culture and gender archetypes, the transdisciplinary artist Martine Gutierrez stages her own movie, assuming a diverse cast of femme fatales in Hit Movie. The photograph—a still from her video piece—alludes to the posters used to promote the 1990s action blockbuster films from which her heroines are drawn. Picturing herself as the Hollywood bombshells, she confronts the industry’s hyperfixation on feminine sexuality, revising Godard’s trope: “whether or not she is born with one, give a girl a gun and you’ve got a hit movie.”

Black and white photograph of silhouetted shadow on door with small sign listing business hours
Lee Friedlander, Mobile, Alabama, 1966
gelatin silver print, 7 x 11 inches (sheet) [17.8 x 27.9 cm]

In this self-portrait by Lee Friedlander, the artist’s shadow stands beneath a small sign noting the shop owner’s partial retirement—a sly image made early in Friedlander’s own career. Known for his playful layering of stylistic elements, Friedlander has often included his own shadow in photographs, inserting himself into the scene with mischievous humor.

A black and white photo of a tree
Robert Adams, South of Burns, Oregon, 1999
gelatin silver print, 14 x 11 inches (sheet) [35.6 x 27.9 cm]
Square wooden artwork with etchings and ink depicting a green form
Robert Adams, Untitled, 2020
ink on wood, 8-3/4 x 8-1/4 x 3/4 inches [22.2 x 20.9 x 1.9 cm]

In 2020, Robert Adams began making painted woodblocks—simplified compositions that draw on the stillness and grandeur he remembers from his time spent on the Colorado prairie. Modest in size and painted in springlike hues with block-printing ink, the wooden works sometimes echo forms found in his photographs. Robert Adams: The Plains, from Memory, collects these works in a catalogue published recently by Steidl.

Color photograph of cargo ship on the water during sunset framed in bleached wood
Richard Misrach, Cargo Ship (January 14, 2022 6:51 am), 2022
pigment print, 63 x 82-1/4 inches (framed) [160 x 208.9 cm], edition of 5

Richard Misrach recently documented cargo ships in the San Francisco Bay, during a critical moment for the global shipping industry. Made in the light of early morning or late afternoon, Misrach’s images suggest a comparison to J.M.W Turner’s atmospheric maritime paintings, and recall the careful observation of the sky and water in Misrach’s own “Golden Gate” series. 

Bernd & Hilla Becher, Cooling Towers [Kühltürme] 1968-1999, 2005
nine gelatin silver prints, 56-1/4 x 68-1/4 inches (installed) [142.9 x 173.4 cm]

Bernd and Hilla Becher’s ambitious nine-part typology pictures a series of cooling towers with an eye toward precision, clarity, and consistency. Seen from the front, each photograph depicts the facade of a tower, with large turbine fans peeking out from the base. With their rigorous photographic practice, the Bechers composed complex typologies allowing for comparative analyses of the shifting industrial landscapes of Western Europe and North America.

Such a project was only possible through the Bechers’ passion and technique. Writing about the recent exhibition of the artists’ work at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Blake Gopnik observes that “the preternatural level of detail on view, and its glorious range of grays and blacks, require negatives the size of a man’s hand, a tripod as big as a sapling, lens filters and an advanced darkroom technique.”

Black and white photograph of child in stroller with sunglasses
Garry Winogrand, Untitled, 1960
gelatin silver print, 14 x 11 inches (sheet) [35.6 x 27.9 cm]
Black and white photograph of a nude smirking child being held by women
Garry Winogrand, Greece, 1978
gelatin silver print, 14 x 11 inches (sheet) [35.6 x 27.9 cm]
Black-and-white photograph of Fran Lebowitz reclining on a couch.
Peter Hujar, Fran Lebowitz, 1975
gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 inches (sheet) [50.8 x 40.6 cm]

Fran Lebowitz was a close friend of Peter Hujar’s, and talks about their relationship in an interview published in Hujar’s monograph Love & Lust. “He was an insider,” says Lebowitz. “What connects all his photographs is that every single person he photographed, every single person that he was interested in, each of his friends, was a misfit. Peter was a misfit.” 

Color image of mixed media work depicting two figures on sandy beach with swatches of blue, white, and yellow in grey frame
Wardell Milan, Two warriors looking for euphoria, 2018
charcoal, graphite, gesso, etching ink, cut-and-paste paper on ink jet print, 47-1/2 x 63-1/8 inches (framed) [120.7 x 160.3 cm]
Two warriors looking for euphoria, 2018 (detail)

Wardell Milan works in mixed media, combining elements of photography, drawing, painting, and collage. Themes of freedom and safety are often at the forefront of his works, especially as they apply to the marginalized body.

Black and white photographs of father and son on white background
Richard Avedon, Dick Hickock, murderer, Garden City, Kansas, April 15, 1960 and Walter Hickock, father of Dick Hickock, murderer, Garden City, Kansas, April 15, 1960
two gelatin silver prints, 20 x 16 inches (each sheet) [50.8 x 40.6 cm], edition of 13

Richard Avedon photographed Dick Hickock and his father Walter at the request of Truman Capote, who was gathering material for In Cold Blood, his groundbreaking non-fiction novel about the murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas in 1959. 

From Avedon, the younger Hickock, “gets the soft-focus celebrity treatment, the line between notoriety and fame as blurred as ever,” Alexandra Schwartz writes in The New Yorker. “Hickock, according to Capote, had always been self-conscious about his long, lopsided face. His nose juts out at a Picasso angle, and while his right eye meets Avedon’s lens straight on, his smaller left one seems to look inward. The result is a double portrait, part persona, part awkward, vulnerable self.”

Framed color photograph of a skate wing suspended by black thread framed in white
Richard Learoyd, Skate wing, 2012
camera obscura Ilfochrome photograph, 46-7/8 x 46-7/8 inches (framed) [119.0 x 119.0 cm]

Richard Learoyd’s photographs have “a kind of fetishistic meaning,” writes Sandra S. Phillips in the catalogue for the artist’s survey at Fundación MAPFRE in 2019. “We relate to these pictures as expressions of art, to be sure, but there is something magical about them, too.”

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]]> 78110 I’m Not the Only One https://fraenkelgallery.com/exhibitions/explore-im-not-the-only-one Tue, 08 Sep 2020 21:23:00 +0000 https://fraenkelgallery.com/?post_type=fraenkel_exhibition&p=76262 I’m Not the Only One is inspired by our current emotional, psychological, and practical transformation. It is an invitation to you, our circle of artists and visitors, both real and imagined. I’m not the only one wrestling with a sense of isolation, but what has surprised and sustained me in this time has been the connections […]

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]]> I’m Not the Only One is inspired by our current emotional, psychological, and practical transformation. It is an invitation to you, our circle of artists and visitors, both real and imagined. I’m not the only one wrestling with a sense of isolation, but what has surprised and sustained me in this time has been the connections in the face of the distances, social and otherwise. 

There is a Portuguese word, saudade [pron:saa·deidz], that does not exist in English. More nuanced than melancholy or bittersweet, saudade is a subtle yet enduring desire for something other than the present. Deep inside this word is the sense that the thing for which one longs may never be had again, while acknowledging that longing for the past would detract from the anticipation for the future. Saudade is likely what most of us are feeling right about now.

-Frish Brandt

A framed black and white photograph of a man walking through an empty plaza
Alec Soth, Facebook, Menlo Park, California, 2013
pigment print, 44 x 57 inches (framed) [112 x 145 cm]
Black and white photograph in white frame of girl in white button up with hair in face and hands
Katy Grannan, Alexa, 2018
pigment print, 58-1/4 x 44-1/4 inches (framed) [148 x 112.4 cm]
Black and white photograph of single figure in empty theater with large white screen
Hiroshi Sugimoto, MK2 Biblothéque, Paris, 2005
gelatin silver print, 18-7/8 x 22-3/4 inches (sheet) [47.9 x 57.8 cm]
Black and white photograph of elderly women seated in armchair and reading newspaper
Diane Arbus, Lady in a Roominghouse Parlor, Albion, N.Y., 1963
gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 inches (sheet) [50.8 x 40.6 cm]
Frish Brandt discusses key works that shaped and inspired I’m Not the Only One, and considers how curating the exhibition transformed her thinking about Fraenkel Gallery’s mission.
Color image of a man sitting on wooden box in front of piano through blue french doors in white frame
Alec Soth, William Eggleston, Memphis, TN, 2000, 2018
chromogenic print, 33 x 41 inches (framed) [83.8 x 104.1 cm]
Color photograph of nude women seated on white marble pedestal turned away from camera with mirror in foreground
Richard Learoyd, Female nude with mirror, 2016
unique Ilfochrome photograph, 80-3/8 x 59-7/8 inches (framed) [204.2 x 152.1 cm]
A framed photograph of an outstretched hand holding a mirror against a window overlooking the city
Alec Soth, Park Hyatt Hotel, Tokyo (Mirror), 2015
pigment print, 42 x 32 (framed) [107 x 82 cm]
Black and white photograph of a movie screen displaying two people kissing
Diane Arbus, Kiss from “Baby Doll,” N.Y.C. 1956
gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 inches (sheet) [27.9 x 35.6 cm]
Black-and-white photograph of the bottom edge of a bed and a television with a childs face on screen
Lee Friedlander, Galax, Virginia, 1962
gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 inches (sheet) [27.9 x 35.6 cm]
Black and white photograph of small television on coffee table in front of large armchair
Lee Friedlander, New York City, 1963
gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 inches (sheet) [27.9 x 35.6 cm]
Framed black and white photograph of mans silhouette standing in middle of desert canyon
Johnnie Chatman, Self Portrait, John Ford Point, 2018, 2019
pigment print, 37 x 53 inches (framed) [94 x 135 cm]
Suite of eight black and white photographs and one text panel framed in black
Sophie Calle, Patrick X, Sixteenth Sleeper, 1979
8 gelatin silver prints & 1 text panel, 19 x 24-3/4 inches (overall, approximately) [48.3 x 62.9 cm]
Black and white photograph of a man smoking a cigar while lying down
Peter Hujar, Chuck Gretsch (with Cigar), 1981
gelatin-silver print, 20 x 16 inches (sheet) [50.8 x 40.6 cm]
Black-and-white photograph of a shirtless man reclining on pillows
Peter Hujar, David Wojnarowicz, 1981 / printed later
pigment print, 20 x 16 inches (sheet) [50.8 x 40.6 cm]
A collage of a figure emerging from a backdrop
Wardell Milan, Edward, 2019
cut and pasted printed paper, 14-3/4 x 12-3/4 inches (framed) [37.5 x 32.4 cm]
Color photograph of a young man with an open white shirt lying on the windshield of a blue car
Nan Goldin, French Chris on the convertible, NYC, 1979
pigment print, 31-3/4 x 46-7/8 inches (framed) [80.7 x 119.1 cm]
Black-and-white photograph of smiling small girl laying on a boulder.
Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Untitled, 1963
gelatin silver print, 8 x 10 inches (sheet) [20.3 x 25.4 cm]
Color image of a black rotary phone
Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller, I Can’t Remember (World Turning), 2010
telephone, solid state playback device, 6 x 8 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches [15.24 x 22.23 x 13.97 cm]
Color photograph in walnut frame of six kids in lake within a mountainous terrain
Richard Misrach, Boy Scouts and Fremont’s Pyramid, Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation, Nevada, 1991
pigment print, 61 x 77 inches (framed) [155 x 195.6 cm]

“To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweet as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know anything so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing — the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one’s hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again. Though we dream and hardly know it, longing, like an angel, fosters us, smooths our hair, and brings us wild strawberries.”

—Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

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]]> 76262 I’m Not the Only One https://fraenkelgallery.com/exhibitions/im-not-the-only-one Wed, 29 Jul 2020 22:58:50 +0000 https://fraenkelgallery.com/?post_type=fraenkel_exhibition&p=68329 Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present I’m Not the Only One, a group exhibition that explores solitude alongside our relentless yearning to connect, in photographs and videos from 20 artists that echo and reflect our current socially distant world. The show will be on view in our gallery from September 8 to October 23, 2020. […]

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]]> Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present I’m Not the Only One, a group exhibition that explores solitude alongside our relentless yearning to connect, in photographs and videos from 20 artists that echo and reflect our current socially distant world. The show will be on view in our gallery from September 8 to October 23, 2020.

explore the exhibition
Mishka Henner, I’m Not the Only One, 2015, Single-channel video with audio (4:34 mins)

The title of the exhibition is inspired by Mishka Henner’s 2015 video I’m Not the Only One, in which Henner digitally combines 18 videos sourced from YouTube. Henner combined individual videos of people, alone in their bedrooms and makeshift studios, performing Sam Smith’s hit song of the same title. Stitched together, these solo performances transform the song’s lonely angst into a powerful yet immaterial chorus of solidarity and connection. Ironically, the current Covid-19 climate has treated us to a myriad of similar choirs from around the world, intentionally singing alone together.

Other works in the first gallery explore the pull between being alone and being part of something larger. In Alec Soth’s 2013 photograph a lone figure seems to dance across an empty expanse of concrete on the Facebook campus, emphasizing solitude and physical distance in contrast with the internet’s promise of ubiquitous connection. And in Katy Grannan’s 2018 image Schatzi, Gerlach, Nevada, a woman holds her wine glass over a backyard fence in a gesture that simultaneously juxtaposes neighborliness with isolation.

Color photograph of woman in blue dress standing on blue bench, holding a wine glass, looking over a fence.
Katy Grannan, Schatzi, Gerlach, Nevada, 2018
pigment print, 29 x 39 inches (image, sheet & mount) [73.7 x 99.1 cm]

In the second gallery, Nan Goldin’s French Chris on the convertible, NYC, 1979, presents a figure lost in his own swoon, suggesting an ecstatic kind of solitude. Also on view are images that alternately highlight the physical and emotional space between subjects. In Richard Misrach’s Boy Scouts, Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation, Nevada, 1991, children stand in waist-deep water, dispersed in an arrangement that suggests the complexity of adolescent friendships. Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s interactive piece was inspired by a time when the couple was apart, and often talked by phone. In it, a vintage telephone has been installed in the gallery. Picking up the receiver, a woman’s voice recounts her disjointed dream.

A video still depicting a mauve colored analog phone on a wooden desk
Christian Marclay, Telephones, 1995
single-channel video with sound, 7 minutes, 30 seconds

Christian Marclay’s seminal 1995 video Telephones is the gravitational force in the final room of the exhibition. This skillfully edited arrangement of clips from movies shows people using telephones the way they were originally intended to be used: dialing, ringing, greeting, and listening. The carefully sequenced fragments coalesce into a conversation between speakers who never seem to connect. In the same room, Johnnie Chatman’s series I Forgot Where We Were… depicts the artist alone in the grand vistas of the West. Set in the romantic and expansive American landscape, Chatman’s silhouette presents a stark image of individuality and isolation.

Fraenkel Gallery President Frish Brandt speaks with artists Elisheva Biernoff, Johnnie Chatman, and Alec Soth about art, isolation, and connection.

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]]> 68329 Signs https://fraenkelgallery.com/exhibitions/lee-friedlander-signs Fri, 19 Apr 2019 17:48:47 +0000 https://fraenkelgallery.com/?post_type=fraenkel_exhibition&p=57368 Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present Lee Friedlander: SIGNS, an exhibition examining the five-decade long obsession of this highly influential photographer. Since the early 1960s, Friedlander has focused on the signs that inscribe the American landscape, from hand-lettered ads to storefront windows to massive billboards. On view from July 11 through August 17, 2019, the exhibition […]

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]]> Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present Lee Friedlander: SIGNS, an exhibition examining the five-decade long obsession of this highly influential photographer. Since the early 1960s, Friedlander has focused on the signs that inscribe the American landscape, from hand-lettered ads to storefront windows to massive billboards. On view from July 11 through August 17, 2019, the exhibition is accompanied by a 112-page hardcover book published by Fraenkel Gallery.

Black and white photograph of several people standing outside of a photography studio
Newark, New Jersey, 1962
gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 inches (sheet) [50.8 x 40.6 cm]

Made in New York, San Francisco, and dozens of cities and small towns in between, Friedlander’s photographs record milk prices, cola ads, neon lights, road signs, graffiti, and movie marquees. Depicting these texts with precision and sly humor, Friedlander’s approach to America transcribes a sort of found poetry of commerce and desire. A large majority of works in the exhibition will be shown for the first time.

Black-and-white photograph showing detail of a sign with the text open pizza
New Haven, Connecticut, 1980
gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 inches (sheet) [27.9 x 35.6 cm]

Also on view will be a group of 16 early Friedlander prints, made on the road in the 1970s, on travels across the United States.

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]]> 57368 Earache, organized by Jordan Stein https://fraenkelgallery.com/exhibitions/earache-jordan-stein Wed, 25 Apr 2018 23:22:00 +0000 https://fraenkelgallery.com/?post_type=fraenkel_exhibition&p=53364 Earache is a photographic exhibition about discomfort, balance, and language. Works on view—and possible connections between them—animate a breakdown between the complex body systems responsible for maintaining stability. Earache will feature works by Berenice Abbott, Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Eugène Atget, Richard Avedon, Sam Contis, Imogen Cunningham, Jay DeFeo, William Eggleston, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Nan […]

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]]> Earache is a photographic exhibition about discomfort, balance, and language. Works on view—and possible connections between them—animate a breakdown between the complex body systems responsible for maintaining stability. Earache will feature works by Berenice Abbott, Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Eugène Atget, Richard Avedon, Sam Contis, Imogen Cunningham, Jay DeFeo, William Eggleston, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Nan Goldin, Peter Hujar, Helen Levitt, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Richard Misrach, Tina Modotti, A.J. Russell, Tisa Walden, Weegee, and William Wegman.

Richard Misrach, Crying Woman (for K.A.C.), Bombay Beach, California, 2011
pigment print, 10-5/8 x 14-1/4 inches (sheet) [45.1 x 59.1 cm]
Black-and-white photograph of a palomino horse's head in profile
Peter Hujar, Horse in Harness (I), 1969
gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 inches (sheet) [50.8 x 40.6 cm]

Earache, an exhibition of photographs largely but not exclusively drawn from Fraenkel Gallery inventory, began with an invitation to look around. A Peter Hujar portrait of the late John Ashbery was an early anchor, and it was through the poet that I found “earache,” a two-syllable lens through which countless images were surveyed over these last months. While many of Ashbery’s concerns map onto those of photography—exposure and opacity, surface and depth, nostalgia and immediacy—it is the poet’s associative rather than thematic approach that most resonates with regards to constructing this exhibition.

A photographer friend suggested the title be dropped once it lost its utility, but the truth is, it never did. Instead, it became a model symptom of a larger, harder-to-name condition. The poem from which it’s taken, however, did give way to a passage from Tara Jepsen’s remarkable 2017 novel, Like a Dog. In addition to skateboarding, the book has a lot to do with risk, loss, trust, and stability. We printed and posted the extended quotation on the wall, like an image.

A black and white photo depicting a hands and a prosthetic foot on the ground
Robert Adams, An inexpensive prosthetic foot, made for the victims of land mines, ca. 1995
gelatin silver print, 14 x 11 inches (sheet) [35.6 x 27.9 cm]

The human balance system provided helpful metaphoric scaffolding, especially the discovery that a small tube in the middle ear maintains equilibrium by matching interior and exterior air pressure. What is the pressure of these pictures under glass, the pressure of the room, the pressure in our bodies, the pressure to sell? Arriving at a single diagnosis for balance dysfunction is cumbersome due to the interconnection of our senses; the same infection that causes an earache, for example, might also bring about persistent vertigo, blurred vision, or cognitive fatigue. In other words, the tools that determine our position in space are capable of sending us across the physical and emotional deck. This exhibition is about that deck, and the notion that perception is an active process of constructing reality.

The tenor of the times affected the checklist, in many cases represented literally as the writing on the wall. The torrential bad-news cycle and its attendant anxieties inspired the more discomfiting and surreal elements and the exhibition begins and returns to a number of narrators, all of them unreliable. Take Atget’s stone faun. Once thought to inspire fear in travelers far from home, fauns were also capable of guiding those in need. Which is it? Pictures are by definition without narrative, and with no narrative comes no expectations. That said, I was surprised that the tone grew more sentimental and melancholic over time— animals and flowers accumulated, as pillows or markers.

I hope Earache carries like a sentence, with varied punctuation, spacing, abstraction, and intent, and that the intuition and free association at the helm of this process is visible.

—Jordan Stein

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]]> 53364 Western Landscapes https://fraenkelgallery.com/exhibitions/western-landscapes Tue, 13 Sep 2016 23:41:50 +0000 https://fraenkelgallery.com/?post_type=fraenkel_exhibition&p=40905 Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present Lee Friedlander: Western Landscapes at 49 Geary Street from October 27 – December 23, 2016. The landscape—especially the extravagantly varied landscape of the American west—has been a recurring subject for Friedlander over the course of a nearly six-decade career. Concurrent with the exhibition, Yale University Art Gallery is publishing an ambitious, large-format […]

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]]> Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present Lee Friedlander: Western Landscapes at 49 Geary Street from October 27 – December 23, 2016. The landscape—especially the extravagantly varied landscape of the American west—has been a recurring subject for Friedlander over the course of a nearly six-decade career. Concurrent with the exhibition, Yale University Art Gallery is publishing an ambitious, large-format book of the same title. The exhibition will include approximately 50 works, the large majority of which are being seen and published for the first time.

Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, 1997

Lee Friedlander: Western Landscapes focuses on the photographs the artist made during a series of road trips through the 1990s and 2000s.

Friedlander’s black-and-white landscapes incorporate a panoply of natural forms: swooping mountain ridges, mirrored lakes, twisting trees, and tufted grasses. Even in daylight, Friedlander frequently employs flash to create densely layered compositions melding foreground and background.

Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada, 2000

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]]> 40905 How I Learned to See: An (Ongoing) Education in Pictures, Curated by Hanya Yanagihara https://fraenkelgallery.com/exhibitions/how-i-learned-to-see Sat, 23 Apr 2016 23:10:00 +0000 https://fraenkelgallery.com/?post_type=fraenkel_exhibition&p=36895 How I Learned to See: An (Ongoing) Education in Pictures, Curated by Hanya Yanagihara, at 49 Geary Street, brings together a varied array of photographs that Yanagihara has chosen for their significance to her growth as an artist. The overarching theme is one of a writer looking deeply at other artists’ creative work—specifically, photographs—as a […]

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]]> How I Learned to See: An (Ongoing) Education in Pictures, Curated by Hanya Yanagihara, at 49 Geary Street, brings together a varied array of photographs that Yanagihara has chosen for their significance to her growth as an artist. The overarching theme is one of a writer looking deeply at other artists’ creative work—specifically, photographs—as a process of learning and discovery. Yanagihara is an American novelist who has been a periodic visitor to Fraenkel Gallery for 17 years.

Color photograph of the outside of a motel lobby at night.
Alec Soth, Riverview Motel, 2005
pigment print, 49-1/8 x 41-1/8 inches (framed) [124.8 x 104.5 cm]

How I Learned to See is organized by six sections or “chapters” on the subjects of loneliness, love, aging, solitude, beauty, and discovery. Yanagihara has selected an idiosyncratic mix, with iconic and less familiar works by 12 artists: Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Elisheva Biernoff, Harry Callahan, Lee Friedlander, Nan Goldin, Katy Grannan, Peter Hujar, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Richard Misrach, Nicholas Nixon, Alec Soth, and Hiroshi Sugimoto.

Black-and-white horizontal photograph of a suburban home, with a figure silhouetted in the window.
Robert Adams, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 1968
gelatin silver print, 14 x 11 inches (sheet) [36.5 x 27.9 cm]

As a preface, the exhibition begins with an early work by Peter Hujar, Girl Throwing Ball, Southbury (I), 1957, which depicts a girl playing in a field at a state facility for adults with intellectual disabilities.

The first chapter, on loneliness, features The Backwards Man in his hotel room, N.Y.C. 1961 by Diane Arbus; a photograph of a desolate motel at night by Alec Soth; Robert Adams’s picture of a solitary figure in a suburban home; a Nicholas Nixon photograph of an AIDS patient; and an affecting recent portrait by Katy Grannan.

The second section of How I Learned to See explores love, including couples by Arbus; erotic works by Nan Goldin; Elisheva Biernoff’s painting based on a found photograph; and two pictures from Ralph Eugene Meatyard’s Lucybelle Crater series (1970-72), showing pairs posing contentedly in humorous and disfiguring masks.

Color photograph of two shirtless white men hugging.
Nan Goldin, Clemens and Jens embracing in my hall, Paris, 2001
Cibachrome print, 28-1/2 x 41 inches (framed) [72.4 x 104.1 cm]

Chapter 3, on aging, begins with a photograph by Arbus of a former beauty, heavily made up while smoking in bed (Brenda Diana Duff Frazier, 1938 Debutante of the Year, at home, Boston, Mass. 1966). Another highlight of this section is a group of eight works from Nixon’s series The Brown Sisters, for which he has photographed his wife, Bebe, and her three sisters annually over the course of 41 years.

The following section explores solitude through works by Harry Callahan, Lee Friedlander, and Arbus, as well as Adams’ celebrated photograph of an illuminated gas station at night (Pikes Peak, Colorado Springs, 1969).

Beauty is the theme of the Chapter 5, for which the curator has selected two seldom seen portraits by Hujar from the late 1950s; Callahan’s iconic portrait of his wife in the water, with her eyes closed and hair floating on the surface (Eleanor, Chicago, 1949); and a luminous work by Goldin (Pawel on the beach laughing, Positano, 1996).

Color photograph of tropical vegetation at night.
Richard Misrach, Untitled (Hawaii XV), 1978
pigment print, 56-1/2 x 69-1/2 inches (framed) [143.5 x 176.5 cm]

The final chapter features work that suggests the position of an outsider coming upon an unfamiliar subject and milieu, including Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Mandrill, 1980, from his Diorama series; Soth’s photograph of a single light bulb hanging above a mysterious clearing in the trees; as well as a pair of pictures by Richard Misrach, shot in Hawaii at night, in which a harsh flash captures the odd tangle of vegetation against the shadowy background of a dense tropical forest.

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]]> 36895 The Plot Thickens https://fraenkelgallery.com/exhibitions/plot-thickens Fri, 29 Aug 2014 04:44:08 +0000 https://fraenkelgallery.com/?post_type=fraenkel_exhibition&p=20559 Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to announce The Plot Thickens, an exhibition and 250-page catalogue marking the gallery’s 35th anniversary. Comprised of 100 photographs acquired and assembled over the last five years, The Plot Thickens revels in the richness of the medium through works by its greatest masters interwoven with prints by the anonymous and unknown. The […]

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]]> Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to announce The Plot Thickens, an exhibition and 250-page catalogue marking the gallery’s 35th anniversary. Comprised of 100 photographs acquired and assembled over the last five years, The Plot Thickens revels in the richness of the medium through works by its greatest masters interwoven with prints by the anonymous and unknown. The majority of images are being exhibited and published for the first time.

The Plot Thickens, Fraenkel Gallery, 2014

The earliest work in the exhibition is Charles Clifford’s moody study of the Alhambra, circa 1858; the most recent is Lee Friedlander’s bullet-riddled “NO SHOOTING” sign, made in June 2014. Photographic objects by Sol LeWitt, Jess, Christian Marclay, and Bernd & Hilla Becher find affinities with Charles Sheeler, Helen Levitt, Thomas Eakins, and William Eggleston. A found snapshot of an all-female wedding, dated 1930, appears near Nan Goldin’s 1978 self-portrait as a dominatrix and an 1860 daguerreotype of two girls holding an image of their deceased mother.

Photographer Unknown, [All-female wedding party], October 7, 1930

Eadweard Muybridge and Diane Arbus—two very different artists whose work contains seemingly inexhaustible achievements—are among the photographers who make repeat appearances throughout The Plot Thickens. Other artists included are: Mel Bochner, Katy Grannan, Alfred Stieglitz, Kota Ezawa, and Ralph Eugene Meatyard, the Louisville optician who left behind an unforgettable body of work at his death in 1972, at the age of 46.

Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Untitled, 1964

Fraenkel Gallery opened in San Francisco in September 1979 with an exhibition of recently discovered albumen prints by the nineteenth-century photographer Carleton Watkins. Since then, the gallery has presented more than 300 exhibitions exploring photography and its connections to the other arts, and published 55 books on subjects ranging from Edward Hopper’s influence on photography to the sculptor David Smith’s multi-decade involvement with photographs, as well as the complete library of Diane Arbus and nine monographs by Lee Friedlander.

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]]> 20559 Mannequin https://fraenkelgallery.com/exhibitions/lee-friedlander-mannequin Fri, 04 May 2012 05:58:00 +0000 http://fraenkelgallery.badfeather.com/?post_type=fraenkel_exhibition&p=2786 Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to announce Mannequin, an exhibition of new photographs by Lee Friedlander. Made over the past three years, and exhibited here for the first time, Mannequin presents photographs by one of the medium’s living masters working at the height of his powers. The exhibition will be accompanied by a 112-page hardcover catalog. […]

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]]> Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to announce Mannequin, an exhibition of new photographs by Lee Friedlander. Made over the past three years, and exhibited here for the first time, Mannequin presents photographs by one of the medium’s living masters working at the height of his powers. The exhibition will be accompanied by a 112-page hardcover catalog.

Black and white photograph of a mannequin in a storefront with the reflection of the buildings across the street in the glass window
New York City, 2011
gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 inches (sheet) [50.8 x 40.6 cm]

Friedlander [b. 1934] is one of the rare artists in any medium to have sustained a body of influential work over five decades. To make the photographs in Mannequin, he returned to the hand-held, 35-mm camera that he used in the earliest decades of his career. Friedlander roamed the sidewalks of New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco, focusing on storefront windows and reflections, which speak to marketplace notions of sex, fashion and consumerism, while recalling Atget’s surreal photographs of Parisian windows made one-hundred years earlier. Thoroughly straightforward, their unsettling and radical new compositions suggest photographs that have been torn up and pasted back together again in near-random ways.

Tucson, 2011
gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 inches (sheet) [50.8 x 40.6 cm]

Friedlander first came to public attention in the landmark exhibition New Documents, at the Museum of Modern Art in 1967. The range of his work since then—including portraits, nudes, still lifes, and studies of people at work—is anchored in a uniquely vivid and far-reaching vision of the American scene.

New York City, 2011
gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 inches (sheet) [50.8 x 40.6 cm]

Lee Friedlander began photographing in 1948. More than forty books about his work have been published since the early 1970s. His career was the focus of a major traveling retrospective organized by the Museum of Modern Art, NY, in 2005. His work can be found in depth in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Art, and the National Gallery of Art, among many others.

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