SFMOMA Welcomes Spring with Refreshing Photography Show ‘Friedlander’

Multiple reflections in store windows, awkward facial expressions of people caught mid-blink or half-smile, desert cacti entangled in dry tree branches, and emaciated models, decorated like cakes (to use Jean Halvorsen’s lucky metaphor) during New York Fashion Week, are just a few of the many themes of Lee Friedlander’s expressive photography. As one of the great cohort of the 20th century, Friedlander keeps his own place among such medium giants as Walker Evans, Diane Arbus, and Garry Winogrand. With his tongue-in-cheek approach to clichés, his appreciation of life’s fleeting moments, his ability to see and convey beauty in dusty back roads and architecturally challenged dwellings of provincial America, and his attention to the unexpected little kinks that surround us on every step, Friedlander delivers a fascinating chronicle of the everyday. “This is one of the most life-affirming bodies of work,” said Sandra Phillips, senior curator of photography at SFMOMA at the show opening. “Lee [Friedlander] makes pictures like an apple tree bears apples.” She also pointed out the diversity of his subject matter, and the “fun and dynamic way” the show is arranged on part white and part painted in brilliant colors walls of the light and airy galleries of the Museum’s fourth floor. The photographs are arranged in groups coherent with multiple topics that stem from the artist’s insatiable curiosity, and even the most historically well represented of them, like the Nudes series bears his unique vision, in this case frank and unapologetic. The show will be on display through May 18. SFMOMA is located at 151 Third Street, San Francisco. 415-357-4000 or visit http://www.sfmoma.org/