Lee Friedlander: The People's Pictures

The democracy of the image in the social landscape

The saturation of our social landscape by photographs and photographers is apparent from any public point of view. Photography is arguably the most democratic of mediums, even more accessible today across culture and class than language. In some regards, this has been Lee Friedlander-s most enduring subject-the way that average citizens interact with the world by making pictures of it, as well as how those pictures and the pictures constructed for advertising or political purposes define the public space.
In Lee Friedlander: The People-s Pictures we see photographs spanning six decades, most of the geographic United States and parts of Western Europe and Asia. These pictures are uniquely Friedlander photographs: as much about what-s in front of the camera as they are about the photographer-s lifelong redefining of the medium. Like his exploration of words, letters and numbers in the social landscape,