Friedlander
Through May 31
Cleveland Museum of Art
11150 East Blvd.
216.421.7340
Free
Lee Friedlander’s Factory Valleys
Through May 31
Akron Art Museum
1 S. High St., Akron
330.376.9185
$7
Photographer Lee Friedlander’s work is a beautiful, exuberant mess.
Throughout his career, which began in the ’50s, his gaze has been
promiscuous, taking in city and countryside, crowded streets and empty
rooms, faces and naked bodies. So it’s no surprise that the Friedlander
retrospective at the Cleveland Museum of Art is a roller coaster ride
of peaks and valleys, while the smaller show at the Akron Art Museum
— focusing on industrial Eastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania
— is more coherent.
Often considered one of the fathers of deceptively casual “street”
photography, Friedlander was clearly influenced by Robert Frank’s
unflinching look at everyday America, although his own vision was less
severe. After starting his career shooting jazz and blues musicians, he
trained his camera on the markers of ’60s America: hotel rooms,
storefronts, TVs, American flags, cars, parking meters, photos of JFK
and parades. But Friedlander layered his images, creating complex
compositions in which one image frames another or the picture field is
divided. They suggest an ambivalent view of American life that
encompasses warmth, humor, forlornness and sentimentality. “Nashville
TN 1963” for example, depicts a room with a TV at left showing cornball
country performers — three women with giant hair and a little boy
in a white tux. A mirror on a door, center, reflects the room, while at
right an open door shows a littered bathroom.
He had less affinity for other subjects. A Warholian series of
partygoers look like outtakes. His family portraits are
run-of-the-mill, never his strong suit. His nudes work, though, neither
idealized nor abstract, but very particular, with saggy breasts, thick
pubic hair and mottled skin. Yet he doesn’t seem to be emphasizing
ugliness like Nan Goldin does. Other series, like one of found letters
and words, produce an occasional stunner: In “New York City 1982,” the
words “Art the Rat” are scrawled on a roughly textured wall that
dominates the frame in the foreground. At its base is a clutter of
empty bottles. At far left is a vertical glimpse of a raw-looking
street: fire escapes, grates, tenements.
In the early ’90s, Friedlander switched from 35mm cameras to
larger-format Hasselblads. The results were mixed. In some, the
enhanced detail fights with the offhand compositions, making them seem
empty. His attempts at Ansel Adams-like landscapes — like “Lake
Louise, Canada 2000″— seem like exercises. But a series of
Chicago’s Wooded Isle effectively deploy a favorite Friedlander trick
— partially or almost entirely obscuring a scene in foliage.
Friedlander’s study of Ohio/Pennsylvania industrial areas at the
Akron Art Museum — commissioned in the late ’70s by its former
director John Coplans — again makes clear that Friedlander has
more affinity for scenes than people. His views of factories, bridges,
trucks, railroad tracks and hillsides covered with ramshackle houses
are evocative. His portraits of workers feel superficial and even
gimmicky. There’s an even more interesting dichotomy between the
Pittsburgh area images and those taken in Cleveland/Akron/Canton. The
former are much more powerful; it’s clear that the hillsides of Western
Pennsylvania stoked his imagination in a way Northeastern Ohio did
not.
This article appears in May 13-19, 2009.