Product Details
Hardcover
156 pages
Fraenkel Gallery
Published 2006
Book Description
"I first went to Japan in 1977 and found the whole country ablaze with blossom. I went again in 1979, 1981 and 1984, always at cherry blossom time. As far as I knew, Japan was always abloom." So says the legendary American photographer Lee Friedlander, whose newest publication presents, for the first time, the complete set of 73 images that the artist made during his four trips to Japan. The groundbreaking black-and-white images--first seen as 25 photogravures in a 1986 portfolio, and long out of print--appear as examples of radical picture-making even 20 years later, as few serious photographers would have dared to photograph cherry blossoms with anything other than color film at that time. The result is a new kind of beauty, with many of the compositions bordering on visual chaos. The images collected here serve as a precursor for much of Friedlander's late landscape work, which was exhibited to great acclaim in his 2005 Museum of Modern Art retrospective. Printed by the laborious dry-trap process, the amazingly sensuous reproductions closely approximate the original prints. This book was produced entirely in collaboration with the artist.~Lee Friedlander is one of the world's most important living photographers.
About the Author
Lee Friedlande was born in Aberdeen, Washington, in 1934 and was introduced to photography at the age of 14. He shot portraits of jazz musicians in New York and New Orleans for album covers in the late 1950s and has made his livelihood as a freelance commercial photographer and as a teacher at UCLA, the University of Minnesota and Rice University. His first important one-man show was mounted at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York in 1963; four years later he exhibited with Garry Winogrand and Diane Arbus in the critical New Documents at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Friedlander was responsible for the discovery of the work of E. J. Bellocq in 1968, publishing his prints of Bellocq's negatives of New Orleans prostitutes two years later. Since then, Friedlander's career has been nothing but distinguished. Among his many awards are a MacArthur Foundation Award, grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, three Guggenheim Fellowships and the 2005 Hasselblad Award. He has published two dozen books, including Self-Portrait, American Musicians, Letters From the People, The Desert Seen and, most recently, the catalog for his Museum of Modern Art retrospective, called simply Friedlander. He lives in New York State. |
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