Lee Friedlander’s exploration of one of photography’s most enduring genres began almost by chance, in the late 1970s, when a teacher colleague at Rice University in Houston lined up a regular schedule of nude models for his students. Almost immediately, Friedlander found that he preferred to photograph the models at their homes, and ingeniously deployed household objects such as bedside lamps, potted plants and sofa fabrics to play off against the angular poses of the models and the emphatic framing of the overall composition. Friedlander’s nudes show every blemish, every contour that makes each body unique, while his flash often serves to counter this realism with a softening effect that often recedes the body’s shadow right up to its outline. With the publication of Friedlander’s nude portraits of Madonna (prints of which fetch huge sums), the series became among the photographer’s best known work, and eventually saw publication in 1991, from Jonathan Cape. Lee Friedlander: The Nudes significantly expands on the Cape edition (itself long out of print), with a total of 84 nudes, plus a new layout and design by Katy Homans and new separations by Thomas Palmer. As such, it offers the most lavish presentation of this key series in Friedlander’s massive oeuvre. Lee Friedlander (born 1934) first came to public attention in the landmark exhibition New Documents, at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1967. More than 40 books about his work have been published since the early 1970s, including Self-Portrait, Sticks and Stones, Cherry Blossom Time in Japan, Family, America by Car, People at Work, The New Cars 1964 and Mannequin. His career was the focus of a major traveling retrospective organized by The Museum of Modern Art in 2005.
Featured image is reproduced from Lee Friedlander: The Nudes.
Lee Friedlander The Nudes: A Second Look is the photographer’s definitive edit of his series of black-and-white female nudes shot between 1977 and 1991, a complete new sequencing of this landmark body of work including images not originally published in the 1991 edition of Nudes.
“The qualities of generosity and openness, and the habit of continual exploration – of logical extemporization enlivened by an unassuming audacity – have produced pictures that persuade us not that the world is simpler and neater than we thought or feared, but that it is more richly rewarding and complex. In the present remarkable case he has produced nudes which are simultaneously carnal and friendly.” –John Szarkowski, 1991
In 1991, when the first edition of Lee Friedlander's Nudes was published by Jonathan Cape, MoMA's John Szarkowski wrote of the photographer, "The qualities of generosity and openness, and the habit of continual exploration – of logical extemporization enlivened by an unassuming audacity – have produced pictures that persuade us not that the world is simpler and neater than we thought or feared, but that it is more richly rewarding and complex. In the present remarkable case he has produced nudes which are simultaneously carnal and friendly." Now available in a new edition re-edited and re-sequenced by Friedlander, and including photographs not published in the first edition, this is one of Friedlander's most surprising, and famous, bodies of work. (His 1979 photographs of then then-unknown Madonna appeared in a 1985 issue of Playboy magazine; one of them sold for more than $35,000 at a 2009 auction at Christies.) Featured image is reproduced from Lee Friedlander The Nudes: A Second Look, published by D.A.P.. continue to blog
On Wednesday, April 30 from 6:30 - 8PM, Pratt Institute launches Lee Friedlander: The Printed Picture: An Exhibition of Books (1969-2014) & Related Ephemera, presenting Friedlander's astonishing body of publications made over the past 45 years. ARTBOOK | D.A.P. is proud to have published, co-published or distributed many of Friedlander's seminal books, and to have worked closely with not only Lee, but his collaborators, Katy Homans, Richard Benson and Thomas Palmer many times over the years. continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 11 x 9.75 in. / 168 pgs / 84 duotone. LIST PRICE: U.S. $24.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $27.5 ISBN: 9781938922008 PUBLISHER: D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers AVAILABLE: 3/31/2013 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of print AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: WRLD Export via T&H
Lee Friedlander’s exploration of one of photography’s most enduring genres began almost by chance, in the late 1970s, when a teacher colleague at Rice University in Houston lined up a regular schedule of nude models for his students. Almost immediately, Friedlander found that he preferred to photograph the models at their homes, and ingeniously deployed household objects such as bedside lamps, potted plants and sofa fabrics to play off against the angular poses of the models and the emphatic framing of the overall composition. Friedlander’s nudes show every blemish, every contour that makes each body unique, while his flash often serves to counter this realism with a softening effect that often recedes the body’s shadow right up to its outline. With the publication of Friedlander’s nude portraits of Madonna (prints of which fetch huge sums), the series became among the photographer’s best known work, and eventually saw publication in 1991, from Jonathan Cape. Lee Friedlander: The Nudes significantly expands on the Cape edition (itself long out of print), with a total of 84 nudes, plus a new layout and design by Katy Homans and new separations by Thomas Palmer. As such, it offers the most lavish presentation of this key series in Friedlander’s massive oeuvre.
Lee Friedlander (born 1934) first came to public attention in the landmark exhibition New Documents, at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1967. More than 40 books about his work have been published since the early 1970s, including Self-Portrait, Sticks and Stones, Cherry Blossom Time in Japan, Family, America by Car, People at Work, The New Cars 1964 and Mannequin. His career was the focus of a major traveling retrospective organized by The Museum of Modern Art in 2005.
