CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/17/2013

Lee Friedlander The Nudes: A Second Look

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..