A superbly assembled survey of Friedlander’s abiding fascination with the American social landscape across six decades
This volume presents 155 photographs spanning 60 years of the artist’s exploration of the built environment in the American social landscape. Collectively these photographs add to one of the broadest and most nuanced visual explorations of America, and, individually, they are filled with the kind of intellectual humor and observation for which Friedlander has become celebrated. Along the way, of course, Friedlander has expanded our ideas of what constitutes real estate, just as he continues to compel us to reconsider how photography reveals essential aspects of our lives over time. The mirror that Lee Friedlander holds up to us is his mirror and everything reflected in it has the common traits of his way of seeing—each picture is definitively a Friedlander picture. Real Estate is an essential collection of one of Friedlander’s lifelong subjects, and takes its place alongside other classic titles of his quest to photograph the ever-changing social landscape: The People’s Pictures (2021), Signs (2019), The American Monument (1976/2017), Letters from the People (1993) and American Musicians (2001).
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
The Atlantic
Annie Lowrey
He does not treat American cityscapes as another photographer might treat a static mountain or an ancient river. He treats them like main characters—confused, chaotic, tragicomic, all-American characters.
The New York Times
Anna Kodé
The collection is a much-needed reminder that everyday-ness, ugliness and the world as it is — without any manicuring or staging — is worth admiring.
STATUS: Out of stock
Temporarily out of stock pending additional inventory.
Wednesday, October 4, from 6–8 PM, International Center of Photography and Eakins Press Foundation present the launch of Lee Friedlander: Real Estate. Friedlander’s longtime bookmaking collaborators Sharon Gallagher, Executive Director of Artbook | D.A.P., designer Katy Homans, printer Thomas Palmer and archivist Stephanie Prussin will join writer and moderator Rebecca Bengal for a conversation on Friedlander’s expansive career and bookmaking process, which spans six decades and includes more than 50 monographs dedicated to the American social landscape. Purchase $5 in-person tickets or reserve free online tickets here. continue to blog
Featured spreads are from Lee Friedlander: Real Estate, launching Wednesday, October 4 at International Center of Photography in New York. Publisher Peter Kayafas writes, “In a Friedlander picture, the houses have personalities. The buildings look like they’ve been caught in the act of doing something embarrassing (Friedlander calls them ‘dumb’), and the empty spaces somehow embody an unlikely combination of irony and optimism. Of course, that could describe just a single Friedlander photograph. But there are 155 here, made over a span of sixty-five years during which numerous episodes of real estate boom and bust rearranged entire cities, towns and landscapes. … Friedlander has spent most of the past century photographing seemingly everything that people make and do in the space we have come to understand as the social landscape. The resulting photographs were born to outlast each instant in which they were made, and are likely to last longer than any of the individual people or buildings depicted in them. … Photography both embraces and denies mortality. There are ghosts in Friedlander’s real estate pictures—ghosts who remind us of the tragicomic absurdity of our own lives without once diminishing the profound beauty of being alive.” continue to blog
Featured spreads are from Lee Friedlander: Real Estate, launching Wednesday, October 4 at International Center of Photography in New York. Publisher Peter Kayafas writes, “In a Friedlander picture, the houses have personalities. The buildings look like they’ve been caught in the act of doing something embarrassing (Friedlander calls them ‘dumb’), and the empty spaces somehow embody an unlikely combination of irony and optimism. Of course, that could describe just a single Friedlander photograph. But there are 155 here, made over a span of sixty-five years during which numerous episodes of real estate boom and bust rearranged entire cities, towns and landscapes. … Friedlander has spent most of the past century photographing seemingly everything that people make and do in the space we have come to understand as the social landscape. The resulting photographs were born to outlast each instant in which they were made, and are likely to last longer than any of the individual people or buildings depicted in them. … Photography both embraces and denies mortality. There are ghosts in Friedlander’s real estate pictures—ghosts who remind us of the tragicomic absurdity of our own lives without once diminishing the profound beauty of being alive.” continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 11.25 x 12.5 in. / 168 pgs / 155 tritone. LIST PRICE: U.S. $65.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $94 GBP £57.00 ISBN: 9780871300959 PUBLISHER: Eakins Press Foundation AVAILABLE: 10/24/2023 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: Out of stock TERRITORY: WORLD
Published by Eakins Press Foundation. Afterword by Peter Kayafas.
A superbly assembled survey of Friedlander’s abiding fascination with the American social landscape across six decades
This volume presents 155 photographs spanning 60 years of the artist’s exploration of the built environment in the American social landscape. Collectively these photographs add to one of the broadest and most nuanced visual explorations of America, and, individually, they are filled with the kind of intellectual humor and observation for which Friedlander has become celebrated. Along the way, of course, Friedlander has expanded our ideas of what constitutes real estate, just as he continues to compel us to reconsider how photography reveals essential aspects of our lives over time. The mirror that Lee Friedlander holds up to us is his mirror and everything reflected in it has the common traits of his way of seeing—each picture is definitively a Friedlander picture.
Real Estate is an essential collection of one of Friedlander’s lifelong subjects, and takes its place alongside other classic titles of his quest to photograph the ever-changing social landscape: The People’s Pictures (2021), Signs (2019), The American Monument (1976/2017), Letters from the People (1993) and American Musicians (2001).
