Lee Friedlander: Christmas

The Financial Times

Megan Hill

Spanning the years 1958 to 2016, [these photographs] tell a story of how Christmas in America has evolved, from the community gatherings of the 1960s through the excess of the '70s and on to the sleek spectacle of the new millenium.

AIPAD: Exposure

Friedlander captures the relentless, sometimes humorous, commercialism of a purportedly religious holiday in the United States.

The Wall Street Journal

Angelina Torre

Friedlander's probing lens exposes many absurdities of yuletide traditions in a consumerist society. In a 2010 photograph, an adult store's window display features Santa-inspired lingerie. Frank, full of character and occasionally disorienting, this collection is a joyful depiction of a uniquely American quirk.

The Wall Street Journal

Angelina Torre

Mr. Friedlander’s probing lens exposes many absurdities of yuletide traditions in a consumerist society. In a 2010 photograph, an adult store’s window display features Santa-inspired lingerie. Frank, full of character and occasionally disorienting, this collection is a joyful depiction of a uniquely American quirk. You needn’t celebrate the holiday to enjoy 'Christmas.'

Art in America

Emily Watlington

Classic and Christmas-y, there’s 'Lee Friedlander: Christmas,' a collection of holiday photographs by one of the medium’s greats.

Air Mail

There is something caricaturalabout Christmas—the plasticnativities on snow-strewnlawns, inflatable snowglobes, and adults ho-hoingin costume. In the 1960s and70s, Lee Friedlander set out todocument 'America’s sociallandscape,' and his black-and-white Christmas photographsare collected in this book.In it, he asks: Is the holidaya religious celebration, anindulgent blasphemy, or both?

The Smithsonian

Amy Crawford

With a healthy sprinkle of plastic and tinsel, Friedlander's visions of a commercial, uniquely American Christmas evoke both irony and nostalgia.

The Boston Globe

Mark Feeney

So much of [Lee Friedlander's] greatness has to do with energy, unpredictability, productivity, humor, an almost-muscular mastery of visual geometry. None of those qualities are associated with Christmas, which makes their presence throughout the book all the more beguiling.

The Chicago Tribune

Christopher Borrelli

[Seventy] years of slightly seedy, kind of ironic, charming black-and-whites of iffy nativities and roadside yuletides.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Suzanne Van Atten

This oversized book of photographs taken over the course of 70 years adds another layer to the chaos by zeroing in on scenes boasting a haphazard array of Christmas decorations. The overall effect is a dizzying commentary on the commodification of the holiday and, on occasion, its capacity as a beacon of hope.

The New York Times Book Review

Leah Greenblatt

Have yourself a very realistic Christmas with these wonderfully quotidian images of the holiday, decked in tinsel and plastic dross. Seven decades of sex-store mannequins, suburban lawns and tired-eyed mall Santas all become rich (if questionably festive) fodder for seasonal drapings, captured by Friedlander’s quietly sardonic eye.

The Smithsonian Magazine

Donny Bajohr

Lee Friedlander, one of the pioneers of the self-portrait, brings his signature whimsy to Christmas.

The San Francisco Chronicle

Tony Bravo

Whether it’s holiday parades or a picture of mannequins in fetish wear and Santa hats, all the images reveal something about the American psyche.

Collector Daily

Loring Knoblauch

What I like best about Friedlander’s Christmas photographs is the way they so smartly mix high and low, combining sneakily sophisticated compositional strategies with a splash of holiday irreverence, making pictures that are at once serious art and playful and impertinent cultural commentary.... Perhaps the most important gift he gives us with these images is his warmly dry wit, incisively reminding us to step back and observe the quiet absurdity of the whole holiday production.

The Wall Street Journal

Brian P. Kelly

While Christmas may be the central focus of this show, Mr. Friedlander’s skill as a photographer is the real gift here.

Air Mail

Carolina de Armas

Friedlander strips away sentiment so that we can see objectively. He invites reflection.

The Observer

Tim Adams

The photographer, now 91, was famous for creating a new visual urban landscape in the 1960s and 70s in which the language of billboards, and the complication of shopfront reflection and often comic street-level juxtapositions all invaded the frame of his pictures. Christmas displays and decorations and have always been, in that sense, the gift that kept on giving.

ARTnews

Andy Battaglia

The volume assembles various kinds of images by the storied photographer who started pointing his lens at American life in 1948 and now finds himself at the age of 91.