CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/21/2019

'Lee Friedlander: Signs' is a photobook for photobook lovers

Featured photograph, made in Arkansas in 1961, is from Fraenkel Gallery's superb new Lee Friedlander monograph, Signs. Designed, as always, by Katy Homans with tritone separations by Thomas Palmer and exquisite printing by Meridian to match, this is a photobook for photobook lovers, collecting—what else?—Friedlander's deadpan pictures of signs across America and Canada from the 1950s through 2017. Tailoring shops, movie marquis, segregated SROs and coffee shops, strip clubs, gas stations, fast food joints, churches, parking lots, billboards, stop signs and patriotic message boards all get their due, alongside a few photographs accidentally starring Friedlander and friends from long ago.