Lee Friedlander: New Mexico revisited
December 23rd, 2008
Fellow photobook afficionado (and blogger) Jeff Ladd has just posted a thoughtful review of the new Radius Books title, Lee Friedlander: New Mexico.
Jeff begins by thinking through Friedlander’s physical approach to photographing, the sense of walking and wandering and peering over and through the urban and wilderness landscape that he encounters. He then muses on a certain sense of dissatisfaction with the work. I really appreciate the line of questioning that Jeff raises, culminating in “One of the most damning questions to ask of a book” which is “Is this necessary?”
In my opinion, this question is as crucial to the experience of creating and editing a book as it is in reading and viewing it from the perspective of the audience. Jeff goes on to state the following: “When I look over Lee’s accomplishments in 33 books and counting I find it difficutl to say yes to this one. It is not because this book is without merit, I think so simply because these bases have been well covered in a few other books now. Almost every photograph here is accounted for in similar versions elsewhere.”
In many senses, I agree with Jeff. I remember one of our first conversations with Mr. Friedlander, where he bluntly told us that “This is not an important body of work, so I don’t want a big pretentious monograph.” Since the project had initially been conceived as an accompaniment to an exhibition, we felt this allowed us the chance to be more playful and creative with our approach to the design, materials and binding of the book, as Jeff points out.
The question of what is important and what isn’t is a broad one, and ultimately a very rich one. In a world where triviality bombards us on all sides and which more often than not keeps us numb to the larger, more systemic problems facing humanity, the last thing I want to do is produce more of it. In thinking through Friedlander’s comment then, that this slim group of photographs of New Mexico was not an “important” body of work, I took it in the sense that this work is not ground-breaking. He’s not pushing the envelope, he’s not looking to re-forge a photographic identity, he’s not looking to make his name with these photographs, nor, in the end, with this book.
Friedlander has been making books since he was a young man. His first book, which was ground-breaking and did forge a photographic identity for him, and which made his name, was also, at its heart, a similar study to what the New Mexico book aspires to: a study of what things look liked photographed and what role the photographer plays in that looking.
At 74 years old, Friedlander does not seem about to change his visual vocabulary (though I wouldn’t rule it out) and in that sense, there is no new ground being broken in terms of his own personal, visual language. He likes driving in plain-jane rental cars and he likes casually wandering down sidewalks across America. He likes his super-wide Hasselblad and he likes photographing 4-5 days a week. To me, the experience of the New Mexico book is one that resonates on a level of, not only attentiveness to one’s surroundings as experienced on foot, but also to the steady, contented workings of a man in the autumn of his life who has found his voice and is happy “speaking” about almost any subject.
I like to think of each of Friedlander’s books as though they are each a poem in an anthology. And while Lee Friedlander: New Mexico doesn’t carry the same weight as his 1970 Self-Portrait or The American Monument, or even his collaborations with Jim Dine, I’m still happy for the quirkiness of The Little Screens or the visual chaos of The Desert Seen and even the sweet quietude of Stems. Were they all necessary, as books? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But I’m glad he’s still steadily making work no matter where he goes, and I’m still glad he’s engaged with the book form.
[Big thanks to Jeff for all his thoughts on photobooks and for bringing his thoughts to this book!]