From Boston to San Diego, Lee Friedlander’s black and white photos of urban landscapes turn mundane street scenes into extraordinary coincidences of arranged forms. In Friedlander’s hands, any vertical object in the environment can bisect a scene into separate vignettes – people standing on the sidewalk as seen through car windows seem to occupy their own separate worlds while on this highway overpass in Dallas, a guardrail divides one location into two radically different places. 45 photos from Friedlander’s 60+ year career selected by filmmaker Joel Coen, now on view at Luhring Augustine Gallery, demonstrate Friedlander’s impressive ability to reframe our view of the world. (On view through July 28th).
