Kirjahaku

Lee Friedlander is celebrated for his ability to weave disparate elements from ordinary life into uncanny images of great formal complexity and visual wit. And few things have attracted his attention--or been more unpredictable in their effect--than the humble chain link fence.Erected to delineate space, form protective barriers and bring order to chaos, the fences in Friedlander's pictures catch filaments of light, throw disconcerting shadows and visually interrupt scenes without fully occluding them. Sometimes the steel mesh seems as delicate as lace; at others it appears as tough as snakeskin. In this book's 97 pictures, drawn from over four decades of work, it recurs as versatile, utilitarian and ubiquitous--not unlike the photographer himself.

In the Industrial North at the end of the 1970s, people were at work with hands and machinery to make things we all use. In the mid 80s, in Wisconsin, they built supercomputers; at the same time, near Boston, they typed on desktop computers. In New York City, in the early 90s, people stood on stock floors, trading. In 1995, in Omaha, they sat at computers, cold calling as telemarketers; and in Cleveland, in that same year, they used their human skills in traditional ways to once again craft products we all depend on. Work, work, work--we spend the better part of our lives on the job, be it in a factory or an antiseptic office, or somewhere else in the vast assembly line in between. Tireless photographer Lee Friedlander, the maniacally inclusive but blessedly nonchalant cataloguer of Americana--her monuments, jazz musicians and urban landscapes--here presents 16 years of Americans at work. A collection of commissioned portfolios, some made at the request of art institutions, others at the behest of company CEOs, Lee Friedlander At Work also documents, albeit subtly, 16 years of one of America's most exceptional and hard-working photographers at work.

Lee Friedlander (b. 1934) first visited the birthplace of jazz in 1957, and immediately set about photographing the aging pioneers of the art form. His love of the music and the people of New Orleans drew him back to the city, and the relationships he formed over time gave him intimate access to a scene that forged one of America’s most original artistic traditions. A revised and expanded edition of his 1992 monograph The Jazz People of New Orleans, Playing for the Benefit of the Band features over 200 photographs taken by Friedlander between 1957 and 1982, many of which are published here for the first time. Storied figures such as Duke Ellington and Mahalia Jackson have been captured by Friedlander’s disarming lens, and Sweet Emma Barrett, Sister Gertrude Morgan, Johnny St. Cyr, and other luminaries are seen in their homes and the back rooms in which they gathered to play. Also included are photographs of the city’s second-line parades, whose jubilant dancing has long been a defining aspect of New Orleans jazz culture.