‘A gift that keeps on giving’: the witty world of Lee Friedlander – in pictures
Guardian Sta·2026-05-26·via The Guardian
The American photographer was ‘adept at turning any scrap of junk into a lavish puzzle’ as these beguiling images of chain link fences and roadside signs shows
Chain reaction … Chicago, 1986
Tue 26 May 2026 07.00 BST
Kentucky, 1977
Lee Friedlander has been photographing the American social landscape since the 1950s: its storefronts and signage, its reflections and contradictions, its stubborn comedy. Life Still brings together more than 130 images – the majority never before published – in a sequence guided by Friedlander’s knack for uncanny association. Lee Friedlander: Life Still is available from Aperture
New York City, 1959
Friedlander prowled the streets of his adopted hometown with an insatiable curiosity, and the city rewarded his attention with a generous supply of scenes that evoke our best ideas and better selves
Nashville, 1963
As Peter Galassi, curator of Friedlander’s monumental 2005 career survey at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, astutely remarked, the artist was ‘adept at turning any scrap of junk into a lavish puzzle’
Nyack, New York, 2007
In the mid-1990s, Friedlander began making more still lifes: inspired by the vases of freshly cut flowers his wife Maria would place around their home, but also ceding to the reality of aching knees. Surgery helped restore his mobility but images like this, made a decade later, bear traces of the careful, quiet aptitude honed during that period
Montana, 1974
Friedlander is the first to acknowledge that encountering a sign for ‘Hope auto repair’ in a remote corner of Montana is a gift that keeps on giving, long after the film is exposed. Along with us, he chortles every time he sees it
Las Vegas, 1997
In the early 1990s, Friedlander made a significant shift, and began to shoot with a Hasselblad Superwide in addition to his trusty Leica. Here, the square format collapses space to emphasise the scene’s inherent contrasts. Behind a drainage ditch clogged with debris, the Luxor casino rises. The stucco sphinx peers over the parking lot wall in a spectacle engineered for the frame, each element equally weighted and equally strange
Tucson, 2011
Friedlander is a prolific bookmaker. For his first book (Self Portrait, published in 1970), he and his wife Maria managed every detail of the sequencing, design and production. Ever since, Friedlander has played a central role in the conception and creation of his books. For Life Still, Friedlander, Stephanie Prussin and Peter Kayafas pulled together work made across seven decades to create a sequence that both guides and surprises readers
Chicago, 1986
Chain link fences are a leitmotif in Friedlander’s career. They form screens and cast shadows, dividing space while remaining permeable, reminding us that we are looking at a two-dimensional description of a three-dimensional world
Savannah, Georgia, 1969
Friedlander speaks of the medium with humility, as if his photographs are simply gifts he has been fortunate to receive, but the more closely we look the more keenly we see just how carefully he guides us through the photograph into life itself
Tucson, 1985
On the back cover of the book, this image captures Friedlander’s signature wit, and the quiet confidence with which he allows photographs to speak for themselves
Everglades, Florida, 1987
Friedlander’s deadpan style is always revealing. Through careful framing and an astute eye for offbeat stylistic sensibilities, he makes the specific feel universal. Friedlander doesn’t editorialise. He points, and trusts we’re all in on the joke
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1975
While still a teenager, Friedlander moved from LA to New York to work as a freelance magazine photographer. There, he met Walker Evans and Robert Frank: two luminaries who helped a young Friedlander realise the creative potential of the medium. The postcard on this window sash is from Evans’s American Photographs, made in Boston in 1930 – a quiet nod to his mentor and friend. All images courtesy of Lee Friedlander; Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco; and Luhring Augustine, New York. Captions from Sarah Meister, executive director of Aperture Foundation
