Lee Friedlander

Lee Friedlander, a seminal figure in the history of photography, and a past recipient of the distinguished Hasselblad Award, marks his first exhibition at Luhring Augustine with "Chelsea." Friedlander—who is known for his array of subjects as much as he is for turning the camera on himself—has on view photographs from four distinct series, all years in the making. The iconic gelatin silver prints on display have not been widely exhibited; with the opening of "Chelsea" comes a rare chance to see the body of work in person.

As the gallery notes:

The exhibition is Friedlander’s first with Luhring Augustine and his first New York gallery show since 2013. The presentation will highlight Western Landscapes (2016), produced after the artist’s major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 2005. The second gallery will feature a selection of work from other series, such as the rarely exhibited bodies of work Dressing Up: Fashion Week NYC (2015) and Chain Link (2017), as well as choice photographs from America by Car (2010).

Friedlander’s vast oeuvre is marked by a voracious and nonhierarchical cataloguing of visual information. His focus is expansive, encompassing photos of intimate familial moments and self-portraits to strangers passing on urban streets; dense, sprawling cities to uninhabited desert environs; suburban window displays to signs spotted from car windows; and everything beyond and in-between. Through his highly distinguished approach to composition, often incorporating off-kilter framing and disorienting reflections that also foreground shadows that signify his own presence, Friedlander simultaneously reveals and capitalizes on photography’s limitations and possibilities.