Lee Friedlander Is Funny. Seriously

 

"At 92, Lee Friedlander is a reigning master of street photography. One morning in the spring, I sat in the comfortable kitchen of his shingle-and-stone house in New City, N.Y., and flipped through the pages of “Life Still” (Aperture, 2026), the most recent book of more than 60 he has published. (The title plays off “still life” and “still alive.”) Whenever I asked what made him take a particular picture — what made his shutter click — his answers were consistent. “It’s really funny!” he would say. With the clear implication that I’d have to be dense not to see that.

A book gives Friedlander the opportunity to put pictures together so that they bounce off each other. “Books are my medium,” he said. “I’d rather be in books than on the wall. You can pick them up, put them in your pocket, take them where you want to go.” “Life Still” is composed of spreads of paired photographs that rhyme like couplets. If one picture is funny, the laugh is heightened when two are placed together and share the joke."

read the interview by ARTHUR LUBOW
and see the gallery of photographs

Lee Friedlander Is Funny. Seriously. - The New York Times