New York City
Lee Friedlander
American, born 1934
1980
A gelatin silver print photograph in which Lee Friedlander compresses a slice of Manhattan into a collage of signs, postcards, and architecture to reveal the city's accidental juxtapositions.
What arrests you is the stacked, layered picture-plane—the large metal '6,' a pegboard of postcards (including views of the Statue of Liberty), and blurred skyscrapers beyond—all held together by strong contrasts of light and shadow that both flatten and separate foreground and background.
The work exemplifies Friedlander’s influential street-photography approach that treated urban visual clutter as composition, helping push documentary photography toward fragmented, self-conscious studies of modern life.
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Dimensions
18 5/8 × 12 3/8" (47.3 × 31.5 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
The Family of Man Fund
Accession
252.1995
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
