America by CarEnduring icons of American culture, the car and the highway remain vital as auguries of adventure and discovery, and a means by which to take in the country's vast scale. Lee Friedlander is the first photographer to make the car an actual "form" for making photographs. Driving across most of the country's 50 states in an ordinary rental car, Friedlander applied the brilliantly simple conceit of deploying the sideview mirror, rearview mirror, the windshield and the side windows as a picture frame within which to record the country's eccentricities and obsessions at the turn of the century. This method allows for fascinating effects in foreshortening, and wonderfully telling juxtapositions in which steering wheels, dashboards and leatherette bump up against roadside bars, motels, churches, monuments, suspension bridges, landscapes and often Friedlander's own image, via sideview mirror shots. Presented in the square crop format that has dominated his look in recent series, and taken over the past decade, the nearly 200 images in America by Car are easily among Friedlander's finest, full of virtuoso touch and clarity, while also revisiting themes from older bodies of work (Friedlander occasionally used aspects of automotive architecture in photographs from the late 1960s and early 1970s). Never has America been photographed so penetratingly and ingeniously as in Friedlander's latest body of work. |
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Alabama Alaska America By Car AMERICAN ART Angeles APPEAR Arizona ARMY UNDER COMMAND ARRIVED OF COCKRELL'S AUTO Award Baby BATTLE BRIC BRICADE OF LOCAN'S California can-can CAR LEE FRIEDLANDER CBJECTS CENTER CHURCH Cleveland Coca-Cola COCKRELL'S BRICADE Colorado COMPOSED CONFEDERATE CORPS country's CREENS Death Valley DEFENSE DRIVEN FEED FRAENKEL GALLERY Friedlander's FUEL GAME GASCARD George Georgia GIRLS GRAVE GROCERY House Houston HYBRID INFANTRY INFO LEFT liberal LINE LOCAN'S DIVISION Mexico MILE MILLERS MIRROR ARE CLOSER MISSISSIPPI MISSOURI Modern Art Montana Museum of Modern Musicians NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY Nevada North Dakota OBAMA OBAMANOS OBJECTS IN MIRROR OFFICER KILLED Ohio Orleans PATRIOTIC PEACE Pennsylvania photographs PORTRAIT GALLERY NATIONAL Published RECIMENTS Rent RENTAL CARS RICHT Savannah SEAT SIXTH SMITH'S DIVISION Special Place STANFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES STOP sung TEMP Texas TEXT TRACK SCAN TRACY'S TRUCK UNION Unleaded VICTOR VOTE WARN Washington WOUNDED Wyoming YIELD York City