(b Aberdeen, WA, 14 July 1934). American photographer. He first became interested in photography in 1948, and from 1953 to 1955 he studied under Edward Kaminski at the Art Center of Los Angeles. In 1956 he settled in New York and supported himself by producing photographs of jazz musicians for record jackets, for example Count Basie (1957; see Malle, pl. 39). He also produced photographs influenced by Eug?ne Atget, Walker Evans and Robert Frank and, like his subsequent works, these were all in black and white. In 1958 he discovered the work of the little-known photographer E. J. Bellocq from whose gelatin dry-plate negatives of the brothels of New Orleans he took prints, which were included in the exhibition E. J. Bellocq: Storyville Portraits at MOMA in New York in 1970. In 1960, 1962 and 1977 Friedlander was awarded Guggenheim Memorial Foundation grants, and his works began to appear in such periodicals as Esquire, Art in America and Sports Illustrated. He had his first one-man show in 1963 at the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House in Rochester, NY. From the 1960s Friedlander started taking photographs of the 'social landscape' of the USA, detached images of urban life which, like Pop art works, captured the feel and look of modern society, though often with depressing effect. Newark, New Jersey (1962; see Friedlander, 1978, pl. 2) is characteristic of these and includes shop-window reflections, posters and signs, which tend to compress spatial depth. In atmosphere and subject-matter these works have affinities with the work of Friedlander's friend Garry Winogrand. Friedlander's collaboration with Jim Dine further emphasized his links with Pop art, and in 1969 they published Works from the Same House. This included etchings by Dine and photographs by Friedlander, so arranged that examples of each faced one another, creating a suggestive juxtaposition of imagery.
See the Abbreviations for further details.
