Lee Friedlander’s new e-book, “Christmas,” collects his work from everywhere in the nation on the subject of our sentimental and materialistic connection to the vacation
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New York Metropolis, 1984. Promoting is a recurring theme in Friedlander’s images, and no determine seems extra typically in retailer home windows than Previous St. Nick.
© Lee Friedlander / Fraenkel Gallery / courtesy Eakins Press Basis
In America, Christmas is an expansive vacation. At completely different instances, to completely different individuals, it could be a joyous celebration of the beginning of Jesus, a time for households to assemble, an overwrought event tainted by materialism—or all of that directly. Whether or not or not you have fun, it’s an unavoidable ingredient of American tradition, as photographer Lee Friedlander exhibits in a brand new e-book, Christmas. For greater than seven a long time, and in locations as numerous as Honolulu, West Texas and upstate New York, Friedlander, 91, has documented what he calls “the social panorama”—stoops, storefronts, roadways—with out bias.
Did You Know? Who’s Lee Friedlander?
Born in 1934, Lee Friedlander hails from a exalted line of avenue photographers akin to Walker Evans and Robert Frank. He is finest identified for his works exploring the “social panorama” of america.
West Texas, 1997. © Lee Friedlander / Fraenkel Gallery / courtesy Eakins Press Basis/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/87/65/87657d94-e940-42d6-bb83-ec51da8b51dc/original_1299-8-jpg.jpg)
The digital camera, he as soon as wrote, is “a type of internet. … The web is indiscriminate except you level it after which are fortunate. I would get what I hoped for after which some—a lot of then some—greater than I may need remembered was there.” And lots is there within the acquainted scenes of his black-and-white Yuletide pictures: molded plastic Nativities in suburban yards, company lobbies festooned with fiberglass decorations and earnest kids assembly Santa Claus. “Like a number of our tradition, it’s this wonderful mixture of commercialism and sentimentality,” says Peter Kayafas, Friedlander’s longtime buddy and writer. “It’s all there, and it’s all American.”
Lee Friedlander: Christmas
With a wholesome sprinkle of plastic and tinsel, Friedlander’s visions of a business, uniquely American Christmas evoke each irony and nostalgia
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