Lee FriedlanderIn 1970, Lee Friedlander published a slim volume of photographs entitled simply Self Portrait. In the decades since its original release, the book has become, in the words of critic A.D. Coleman, "a cornerstone in the tradition of photographic self-portraiture". In the 1990s, Friedlander returned to the project of self-portraiture. "I started again after I did a couple and realized that I'd metamorphosed into something else", he has said. "l wasn't the same person any more, and I wanted to document that". As one critic, Glen Helfand, noted in reviewing an exhibition of these prints, "he looks more weathered and aged in these pictures as he wistfully rests his head near the travel clock on a hotel room night stand, reclines in bushes or leans against cacti". Especially when seen in contrast to the earlier work, these images offer us a reflection on maturity, on a self become less mutable and now with age more stubbornly real and individual, the self that is Lee Friedlander. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved. |
