Originally published in 1970, this understated gem of a book introduces Friedlander's self-conscious posture. The original edition has become a collector's item, and now D.A.P. brings it back into print as a hardcover.

Lee Friedlander

Arts & Photography

Individual Artists

D.A.P./Fraenkel Gallery

In Sticks &amp; Stones, Lee Friedlander offers his view of America as seen through its architecture. In 192 square-format pictures shot over the past 15 years, Friedlander has framed the familiar through his own unique way of seeing the world. Whether he's representing modest vernacular buildings or monumental skyscrapers, Friedlander liberates them from our preconceived notions and gives us a new way of looking at our surrounding environment. Shot during the course of countless trips to urban and rural areas across the country, many of them made by car (the driver's window sometimes providing Friedlander with an extra frame), these pictures capture an America as unblemished by romanticized notions of human nature as it is full of quirky human touches. Nevertheless, man's presence is not at stake here; streets, roads, façades and buildings offer their own visual intrigue, without reference to their makers. And in the end, it is not even the grand buildings themselves that prick our interest, but rather the forgettable architectural elements--the poles, posts, sidewalks, fences, phone booths, alleys, parked cars--that through photographic juxtaposition with all kinds of buildings help us to discover the spirit of an Architectural America.

Lee Friedlander: Sticks & Stones: Architectural America

Richard Misrach is among the most influential, prolific and internationally recognized photographers working today. Best known for his epic ongoing project, Desert Cantos--an extensive and unique photographic exploration of place--Misrach consistently addresses political and social issues through the adaptation of different photographic strategies, even as he expands notions of traditional landscape practice, and builds a complex and poignant document of American culture. His subjects have included manmade floods and fires, military bombing ranges, mass graves of dead animals, sublime night skies and details of paintings housed in the museums of the Southwest. In one recent series, On the Beach--which was inspired by Nevil Shute's postapocalyptic novel of the 1950s--Misrach's color photographs deal with the human figure seen at a distance on an unspecified beach or in the water, observed from an unsettling and difficult-to-identify point of view located high above. Misrach's newest publication, Chronologies is a compelling study of the photographer's process over the past 30 years. Stripped of their original context, the photographs--presented in chronological order--illuminate how the photographer thinks and works. Through fits and starts, reiterations and detours, the work evolves and matures, weaving in and out of the series for which Misrach has become known. Side-by-side, classic images and never-before-seen pictures flesh out the photographer's logic and complicate it at the same time. Ultimately, Chronologies is about time: The span of 30 years, the importance of time in each photograph, the chronology of a life within its time, and the book itself as a timepiece.

Richard Misrach: Chronologies

A meditation on the nature of photography itself, The Book of Shadows is a collection of 88 anonymous photographs spanning the twentieth century, all of which share a common "mistake"--the photographer's shadow falling into the image. Selected by gallerist Jeffrey Fraenkel from his personal collection of more than 2000, these images represent, in Fraenkel's words, "the most tenacious, peculiar, and downright sublime of the crop." The shadows frequently convey striking aspects of their maker's personalities, and tell us more than might be expected about the person behind the camera. But as Fraenkel writes in the book's introduction, "the shadow's most striking feature is that it tips us off and confirms the photographer was there, a reality not generally evident in photographs. We take for granted photographs were made by someone, a person with a reason for making the picture, but that observer--who by extension is also us--is rarely acknowledged so overtly in the pictures themselves." This book itself is a work of art. Bound between suede covers, and exquisitely printed by the master craftsmen at Trifolio in Verona, Italy, The Book of Shadows is a reminder, even in a digital age, that the power and mystery of photographic depiction still evades any attempt to describe it.

The Book Of Shadows

Photography & Video

Enduring icons of American culture, the car and the highway remain vital as auguries of adventure and discovery, and a means by which to take in the country's vast scale. Lee Friedlander is the first photographer to make the car an actual "form" for making photographs. Driving across most of the country's 50 states in an ordinary rental car, Friedlander applied the brilliantly simple conceit of deploying the sideview mirror, rearview mirror, the windshield and the side windows as a picture frame within which to record the country's eccentricities and obsessions at the turn of the century. This method allows for fascinating effects in foreshortening, and wonderfully telling juxtapositions in which steering wheels, dashboards and leatherette bump up against roadside bars, motels, churches, monuments, suspension bridges, landscapes and often Friedlander's own image, via sideview mirror shots. Presented in the square crop format that has dominated his look in recent series, and taken over the past decade, the nearly 200 images in America by Car are easily among Friedlander's finest, full of virtuoso touch and clarity, while also revisiting themes from older bodies of work (Friedlander occasionally used aspects of automotive architecture in photographs from the late 1960s and early 1970s). Never has America been photographed so penetratingly and ingeniously as in Friedlander's latest body of work.

Lee Friedlander: America by Car (D.A.P./FRAENKEL)

Enduring icons of American culture, the car and the highway remain vital as auguries of adventure and discovery, and a means by which to take in the country's vast scale. Lee Friedlander is the first photographer to make the car an actual "form" for making photographs. Driving across most of the country's 50 states in an ordinary rental car, Friedlander applied the brilliantly simple conceit of deploying the sideview mirror, rearview mirror, the windshield and the side windows as a picture frame within which to record the country's eccentricities and obsessions at the turn of the century. This method allows for fascinating effects in foreshortening, and wonderfully telling juxtapositions in which steering wheels, dashboards and leatherette bump up against roadside bars, motels, churches, monuments, suspension bridges, landscapes and often Friedlander's own image, via sideview mirror shots. Presented in the square crop format that has dominated his look in recent series, and taken over the past decade, the nearly 200 images in America by Car are easily among Friedlander's finest, full of virtuoso touch and clarity, while also revisiting themes from older bodies of work (Friedlander occasionally used aspects of automotive architecture in photographs from the late 1960s and early 1970s). Never has America been photographed so penetratingly and ingeniously as in Friedlander's latest body of work. This edition of America by Car is limited to 1000 copies and is signed by Friedlander.

Lee Friedlander: America by Car: LIMITED EDITION

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