How lucky can you get - Lee Friedlander's 'America by Car'

During an amazing birthday weekend with friends in Amsterdam, I had tremendous luck in coming across an exhibition of Lee Friedlander's 'America by Car. I always try to  check out whether there are any photography museums / exhibitions in cities visited on holiday and I struck gold in Foam, the photography Museum in Amsterdam.

I really like his work and to come across such a comprehensive collection of hos photographs was fantastic and particularly timely as I have just completed my monochrome assignment.

America by Car is Friedlander's great road trip..a series of images where he is looking out from cars as opposed to the earler body of work that he did for Harpers's Bazaar in 1060s.

This earlier assignment commissioned in 1963 by Ruth Ansel and Bea Feitler was all about photographing a fleet of next year's car models for a preview portfolio to be published in the November issue. They asked only that Friedlander produce his work on time.
This was the era of very memorable classic car design; cars were coming off the factory line symbolising 'American cool' - sleek, smooth curves and elongated bodies. So not surprisingly, Friedlander's take as someone who could not be called an car enthusiast in any way and who pushed the cars well into the background almost relegating them to very subsidiary roles did not go down well with Harper Bazaar's editor, Nancy White. She pulled the feature concerned at how the car companies might react.

The reason for mentioning this is that looking at the exhibition before me in Amsterdam, I could see his provocative approach again.. juxtaposition of the ordinary and regarded by some as awkward intrusions encroaching on the composition.

Lee Friedlander California 2008

Trying to work out what I like about his images here has been a real test. On one level, I just love the idea of looking at the view from inside the car where the car interior shapes the outcome as much as the camera. We usually look out unconsciously ignoring the 'car frame' to see the view but here the car is part of the view. Reading about the exhibition it seems that Friedlander often chose rental cars according to the pictorial potential of the interior door panels, centre consoles and steering wheels. On the other hand I like the use of the wing mirror to add a 'second layer'; an extension of and contribution to the image . And then there are the visual jokes...

Lee Friedlander Montana 2008

I was interested to learn from the exhibition notes that in the early 1990s, Friedlander began to use a Hasselblad Superwide camera. This produced a square negative  more than four times the size of that yielded by his 35mm Leica. What seemed to result here was a larger field of vision and the camera's ability to compress space so that things both very far and very near could be rendered in the same frame with the same clarity.

These are beautiful monochrome images. I like the compositions; I like the 'architectural dynamism of the images. I admire the creativity and skill that produced such work.. Shall be definitely looking to discover more of Friedlander's work. 


Footnote:   Would recommend anyone visiting Foam while in Amsterdam. One of the other exhibitions there was Cristina De Middel's 'The Afronauts' ; again a fortunate discovery as I had been telling a friend travelling with me all about the Borse Deutsch Photography Prize 2013 the previous evening!  

Foam
Keizersgracht 609
1017 DS Amsterdam
www.foam.org