New York City
Lee Friedlander
American, born 1934
1971
A gelatin silver print that captures a crowded New York moment in a single candid instant, the photographer aiming to reveal the compressed intimacy and accidental encounters of urban life.
What strikes you is the claustrophobic closeness—the back of a head dominating the foreground while a tangle of tired, amused, and surprised faces peek out and are frozen by the flash into a dense, contradictory tableau.
This image exemplifies Friedlander’s use of flash, tight cropping, and fragmented composition to turn fleeting public moments into psychologically rich pictures, helping to redefine the possibilities of street photography.
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Dimensions
6 5/16 × 9 1/2" (16.1 × 24.2 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Purchase
Accession
422.2000
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
