There are always good reasons to travel to Berlin, as evidenced over the decades by the city’s promotional slogan Berlin ist eine Reise wert (Berlin is worth a visit). For the keen photographer, there is now a compelling reason to visit an exciting exhibition in a very special location.
The current exhibition, covering six productive decades in the life of US photographer Lee Friedlander, is yet another compelling reason to visit Berlin. Around 350 images are displayed in the C/O Berlin Gallery, near to the Zoologischer Garten train station. And most of these images were created with a Leica.
Lee Friedlander is for sure one of the most prominent American contemporary photographers. Born in 1934, he is now looking back to a lifespan of disciplined work with the camera. Friedlander’s subject was mainly America – in a complex series, he documented and commented on nature and culture, history and present, individual and society in the US context.
All major series are represented in the exhibition
Out of these series, most notably “American Monument”, “Little Screens” and “America by Car”, a significant selection is on display in the Berlin exhibition. Self-portraits, family shots and landscapes round off this retrospective. More on the idea of the exhibition is to be found here. It runs until December 3, 2021.
A real and massive retrospective
A visit is highly recommended, but visitors should summon up some energy. The sheer number of photographs is rather overwhelming. 350 images surely make for a substantial exhibition, and your visit will take time. All photographs are conventionally framed and have been hung quite densely in groups. This is appropriate if you recall how Friedlander worked, as it evokes a strong feeling of coherent series. But viewing it demands concentration and patience.
Small formats, great display
I was surprised by the small format of the images. The prints were made by Friedlander himself, and they are masterly. But he somehow seems not to like the really large, museum-style formats. No surprise, as Friedlander always insisted on his position that a book was the best medium to bring his photographs to their audience. Most prints of the Berlin exhibition are around 9 by 12 inches in size and thus have the dimensions of a full page in a photography book.
An artist breaks with many conventions
I was extremely impressed by Friedlander’s self-portraits. For me, they truly epitomise his artistic approach. For Lee Friedlander, it is not about “perfection” or “aesthetics”. Despite this, however, many of his photos are very carefully composed, and many have an indisputable beauty in themselves. In a way, Friedlander presents himself as an enfant terrible in the context of photographic culture. He breaks with almost all conventions, pretty much the way his contemporary authors of the beat generation did in the 1960s.
Friedlander deliberately adds elements to his images that other photographers of his own and earlier generations would have criticised as imperfections. For Friedlander, such reflections, shadows and impurities are statements. Often, they are conveying the image of a man with good humour and deep knowledge at the same time.
From a Leica M to the Hasselblad SW
For Macfilos readers, it might be interesting that the Berlin exhibition also overtly raises the subject of Friedlander’s photographic tools. He used a Leica for decades, and one self-portrait of him is prominently displaying an M camera.
Later on, as the explanatory text of the exhibition highlights, Friedlander started to use a Hasselblad Superwide camera with its legendary 38 mm Biogon. This step, in the 1990s, allegedly opened new creative spaces for him due to the immense richness of detail in the medium format negatives, the virtual absence of distortion (in this respect, the “America by Car” images are all the more impressive) and the great depth of field. All true for sure, but I am wondering if the camera was really so decisive for Friedlander’s photography.
But best to see yourself. And even if you can’t make it for the Lee Friedlander exhibition, make sure you visit C/O Berlin when you are in the city (it is a ten-minute walk away from the Leica Store in Fasanenstraße, just off Kurfürstendamm). C/O Berlin started as a gallery project and was transformed into a charitable foundation some years ago. They specialise in significant exhibitions of contemporary photographers and younger talents. I have never been disappointed after a visit there.
And there is one more reason to go to C/O Berlin – it is a very special and very Berlin place: C/O Berlin uses the former Amerika-Haus. During the Cold War, this building was arguably the most important outpost of US cultural policies worldwide, intended to bring the dialogue of the Free World to a location near the Berlin Wall. So, the building alone, located next to Zoo station in the centre of old West Berlin, might strike an interesting chord for some of the visitors, especially from overseas.
Lee Friedlander, Retrospective. Exhibited at C/O Berlin, Hardenbergstraße 22-24. Open daily from 11:00 to 20:00 until December 3. The €10 admission also allows for a visit to the parallel exhibition on the building’s upper floor: Peter Miller (born 1978 in Burlington, Vermont, USA), “Dear Photography”. This one is also very interesting and worth your time.
Do you have favourite places for photography exhibitions? Any photography-related museum that you would like to recommend? Something that is a must-see for you? Or any warning of a tourist trap one should not step into? Which is the next photography exhibition you want to see and which one do you especially regret having missed? Go ahead and use the improved comments section below…
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I would posit, and I remember reading (somewhere) that Friedlander has said so himself, that the use of the Hasselblad SWC opened up a new way of seeing for Lee. So, in this instance, that specific camera was very very important.
Might well be true, Hank, the accompanying texts in the exhibition stated the same (I do not remember their source, sorry). A new tool can open a new creative space for sure, I experienced it myself when I started to work with rangefinder cameras. I was only a bit bewildered that the topic was adressed in such a direct way in the exhibiton.
Well David. I’m learning Japanese too. I plan to visit Japan and immerse myself in street photography and drink copious amounts of sake and consume considerable amounts of Japanese food. My knowledge and experience concerning Japanese food exceeds my command of the language at this moment though.
Thank you J-P for putting together a thought provoking article. I will leave it to others to provide their own judgements on Friedlander’s work. Suffice to say that I would always attend a photography or art exhibition that opportunity presents – both positive and negative experiences are learning experiences.
Instead, I’d like to focus on your photographs in the article. Perspectives and compositions are thoughtful. For me, the way that you present LF’s Self Portrait with Leica is a standout – the sharp angle of view maintaining it within the context of the exhibition is instructive.
Overall, the light and subdued colour in your images presents well…….and all from an iPhone……they look good on the iPad……a sign of our inevitable future!
Thanks, Wayne, I am glad that you see the effort I took to get some decent images of this exhibition. I almost never use my old iPhone to take images, and all the more was I surprised that the quality is not so bad.
I was not able to use my M because the battery was low (the spare battery already empty) and I traveled without a charger by mistake. So I left my two batteries in the nearby Leica store where the helpful staff recharged them for me while I had my learning experience. And that’s what a serious exhibition offers for sure.
And is smartphone fotography is our future? I am more inclined to believe it after this gallery visit. What I know for sure is, however, that I will always love to work with a real camera for a number or reasons. JP
I first became familiar with Friedlander’s work about 50 years ago through jazz albums. He was a very good photographer of jazz musicians and his work in colour adorns the covers of albums by giants of the genre such as Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Charles Mingus. He would not be my favourite jazz photographer as I prefer the black and white work of Herman Leonard, William Claxton and William Gottlieb. I have seen other work by Friedlander and, yes, he is a very good photographer indeed, well worthy of an exhibition in any part of the world. I would certainly go to see an exhibition of his work if I lived in Berlin.
As for exhibition print size, this has be a matter to be discussed between the artist (if still alive) and the curator/s. I have seen exhibitions with much smaller prints than those in the Berlin exhibition and others with massive prints the size of gallery walls. Both can be equally valid. I usually ignore print descriptions, or to put it another way, I look at the print first and then read the description, but only for factual information.
My favourite gallery is, of course, the Gallery of Photography, Ireland where I am a member of the Board of Directors, now Trustees, since we recently achieved charitable status. We try to keep the programme varied. In August and September we photographs of the Irish by Magnum photographer, Martin Parr. In October we had photographs from the Prix Pictet, some of whom were by Irish phtographers and at the end of this month we have our History of Irish Photography exhibition opening. Readers here may recall my recent article about this. The exhibition is too large for our gallery and we have had to hire part of Dublin Castle for it. So, it takes all kinds of things to keep the programme of a gallery of photography going and it is always good to have an interesting mix of up and coming and local photographers, as well as ‘international superstars’ if any photographer, alive or dead, merits that title.
William
Thanks for sharing this, William. If I ever come to Ireland again, I will pay a visit to the Gallery of Photography. Any instutution with your knowledge and experience in its background must be excellent. JP
That’s always in the air: is the photograph the print or what you saw and captured with your camera? Photographers like Friedlander were of the last group. Even Ansel Adams (using large format cameras and mastering printing) made mostly small prints.
Large printing format came later to galleries, specially once the digital revolution was on the road.
I saw that or similar exhibition in L’Orangerie, in Paris some years ago. And have two or three of his books, among them the one of the small screens.
It’s not my best of the bests and agree in the point other street photographers had a more intense relationship with citizens.
Good thought, George, it’s bit like the question if the music is in the score or in the concert hall/loudspeaker. Poor photos do not get better by large printing despite popular belief. And, of course, digital technology expanded the possibilities. At Leica Galerie Konstanz, images by young German Photographer Tom Hegen are exhibited. Some were printed in 1,40 x 1 metre size. Massive and only convincing because they were made with a 100 MP camera. Otherwise the size would have been simply pretentious.
Thanks Jörg-Peter
I always wonder about many of the huge prints in museums and walls. What is the merit of printing them in a massive machine. Does that make them better, more expressive or just more expensive.
I’ll a google look on Tom Hegen. Maybe better to visit Konstanz!
Konstanz ist eine Reise wert, too. 🙂 If you are around one day, get in touch via Mike, I will show you around a bit.
Many thanks for the invitation Jörg-Peter. It would be great 😟 to make a visit.
I’m no art historian but am definitely a student of photography. I have been a photographer for about 2 years which is about the time I have owned a proper camera apart from my smartphone. Early on my entry was into digital photography and I realised there was so much divisiveness even for something as trivial as camera brands. Photographic work possibly incites just as much discussion ,arguments and disdain. I steadily purchase 2-3 books on photography a month for my growing library. I realise looking at my selection of books I have gravitated towards documentary and narrative photography recently compared to my first book which were landscape in genre. Thank you for writing this article. Though I am more inclined towards the Jim Marshall type of images. I’m on my way to possessing a Leica and am learning German. Both for which are sure to work well together. We all have our preferences. After all we are human.
“..I’m on my way to possessing a Leica and am learning German..” ..are the two related? ..I mean, would you learn Japanese if on your way to getting a Canon?
When writing a public relations proposal to a Japanese motorcycle manufacturer fifty years ago I included the rash promise: “I will learn Japanese within six months”. I failed miserably and am now left clinging forlornly to konichiwa and ichiban. I am now older and wiser. But I did get the contract and did a good job for the company.
Arigatōgozaimashita!
.
The description of the show, on C/O’s own webpage, says – among other things – “In his self-portraits, he deliberately resorts to devices such as silhouettes and mirror images, revolutionizing a genre in which such methods were long shunned and dismissed as basic mistakes”. ..? Really? ..That rhapsodising does sound like something new and revolutionary.
But just look at Vivian Maier’s (unseen till John Whatsisname bought up her unprocessed rolls of film) self portraits: there’s nothing that Lee Friedlander did in his self portraits which Vivian Maier hadn’t done in hers.
I think the gallery’s descriptions are a little ‘precious’, making rather more – as often happens with gallery descriptions – of the photos than is actually evident in the pictures themselves.
Who hasn’t taken photos of the images on a TV? And who hasn’t taken pictures of their own shadow, for example?
Take this caption from the exhibition website: “A motorcyclist races straight towards us, headlights on full beam..” ..no, dear; there’s just one headlight, and I think if it were on “full beam” it’d have dazzled the camera’s lens. The caption is what one might call ‘artistic licence’, or a flight-of-fancy over-dramatisation. (On the Fraenkel Gallery’s – Friedlander’s agents – captions, Walker Evans (no relation?) is quoted as saying of the TV photos “..deft, witty, spanking little poems of hate”.)
The C/O Gallery’s webpage says “This photo is taken from Lee Friedlander’s Little Screens series, which sees TV sets make their triumphant entry into the daily lives of Americans, as a mass means of explaining the world”.
But Friedlander’s own agent describes these as “..the omnipresence of screens and the drone of television voices in an increasingly isolationist culture”.
The C/O Gallery’s attitude is that they’re heroic and “triumphant”, but his own gallery describes them as showing an “increasingly isolationist” life. Y’see; you can describe the pictures any way you want. And no gallery’s description is the ‘real’ or ‘accurate’ or ‘definitive’ description of his – or anyone else’s – photos.
I think that, to a great extent, Friedlander just drew attention to – which then became, through critics’ opinions, almost fetishising – the mundane ..rather like William Eggleston’s own colour photos.
Friedlander saw things which caught his attention, and he was deft enough to snap them ..rather like Matt Stuart, but often without Matt Stuart’s incredibly well-observed humour and love of people.
There’s a kind of desolation or disaffection in many of Friedlander’s photos, which I find rather wearying and often depressing ..and so, 350 of them? ..Er, not just now, thanks!
As an aside, it’s such preciousness of photo descriptions (even allowing for translation quirks) that cause me to have an annual dither about renewing my LFI subscription, though the counterbalance of a few stunning images have always won (so far). But there really ought to be some internationally recognised warning symbol for photo descriptions that could trigger the writer’s imminent disappearance up his own fundamental orifice.
I fully agree that photo descriptions are sometimes phony, and I hate it when marketing speak enters the world of art. But – being an art historian myself, God knows I realize how difficult it is to put visual representations into words. So I think it is not fair towards the people who take great care (and expertise, David) to ridicule their work.
Ideally, an image works without any explanatory words, I agree. But sometimes, text is helpful to make connections from the photo itself to the world it represents and interprets. Of course you might disagree with the gallery selecting any artist for granting her or him a retrospective. And even more you can disagree with me in the question if this is an exhibition worth seeing or writing about. I just tried to give you some insights, I am no missionary.
And is Lee Friedlander a great photographer now? He has some significance for sure, and the exhibition did not destroy this notion for me personally. And what more? Art is in the eye of the beholder. That is freedom for me.
“So I think it is not fair towards the people who take great care (and expertise, David) to ridicule their work.” This pun was NOT intended :-), but I think you got it.
(Er, no; I’m afraid I didn’t get it, JP.)
“..So I think it is not fair towards the people who take great care (and expertise, David) to ridicule their work”. But I don’t think that they necessarily DO “..take great care (and expertise..” I took an online course a few years ago, run by a curator of photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. She was presenting a whole load of pictures of the moon. She included a famous photo by Eugene Atget of people staring at ..the sun.
She claimed that photo emulsions in Atget’s time were “not blue sensitive” ..whereas any fule kno that they were exclusively blue sensitive, which is why his photo of sunflowers – which she included – is so black: because his photo emulsion could not register red or yellow light. But she dismissed that point as nit picking. (She was not a photographer herself, and didn’t know anything about any ‘technicalities’ of photography, but just wrote about what she considered to be the essentials of various photos.)
I’m not convinced – no disrespect to you, of course, JP – that all gallery, or museum, photography curators know much about the material they’re presenting: they have their own interpretations of much of it ..but those may sometimes be uneducated and photographically-illiterate interpretations.
“This photo is taken from Lee Friedlander’s Little Screens series, which sees TV sets make their triumphant entry into the daily lives of Americans, as a mass means of explaining the world”. ..No, no, no. They are not photos of TV programmes which are “explaining the world”, but photos which juxtapose startling images on TV screens with the banality of real life.
Those ‘Little Screens’ photos aren’t showing TV as “..a mass means of explaining the world”, as the C/O Gallery describes them; they’re contrasting the manufactured excitement of TV with dull, humdrum everyday experiences.
Whoever wrote the caption on C/O’s webpage doesn’t understand what those photos are about, or what they’re intended to express. I don’t think that they have “expertise” ..I think that they just don’t understand what they’re looking at.
As you say, “..Art is in the eye of the beholder..”, but some of the beholders who hold prestigious positions from which to comment on photography, do not necessarily know what they’re talking about.
None of this is a criticism of you, JP, or this article, above; it’s a criticism of some of those, who ought to know better, who talk nonsense about what it is that we’re actually looking at.
Fully agree, David, I did not feel offended. See my reply to Tony below. There are people everywhere who have more self-esteem than knowledge. And sometimes I am among them… So far – JP
I agree many times curators and museum “lyrics” are addressed to form a discourse in one or another direction, sometimes fictional or related to this or that social meaning.
That’s many times how the importance of a photographer is to be determined. Fortunately the “good” are quite often the good.
About TV, no much difference between
“a mass means of explaining the world” and “the manufactured excitement of TV with dull, humdrum everyday experiences” in that times of b&w which made the excitement of many dull or not living rooms, and of course explained the way men walked on the moon live.
Jorg-Peter, I really don’t want to drag this too far off-topic and I would personally hate to have the responsibility or challenge of an art historian formulating the description of an image, eve if I had the knowledge or expertise. Putting an image into its context is fine and laudable, as well as often adding a fresh dimension to its appreciation. All well and good. Where I start to twitch gently is when none of this applies and it’s simply one person’s subjective view of one particular aspect of an image that happens to tally with their own (not the photographer’s) current hobby-horse. In the days when I belonged to local camera clubs, there would be a particular breed of roving competition judge who, when invited to comment on a reasonably presentable image, would launch into their “What is the author (never the photographer) trying to tell us here” monologue, always a sign that we had a particularly long evening ahead of us. End of rant.
Fully agree, Tony! And come on, this is no rant. Among art historians and the like, there are many who are more interested in their own oh-so-important texts than in the images themselves. We have a German saying for this, but it is no way suitable for this civilized community here. So let’s leave it at that. JP
I have to be careful what I say because of positions which I hold, but there is a lot of truth being spoken where. Post hoc rationalisation is dangerous at the best of times, but when it is applied to someone else’s work and particularly when that person is no longer with us, then the less said the better. Curators and gallery and museum directors should present work as far as possible, as is, with as little comment as possible and, to use the old cliche, let the pictures speak for themselves. There may be a need to explain locations and dates and that is fine once it the information given is accurate. I am sure that most people are like myself and want to to appreciate works without too much noise from ‘off stage’. I include in this ‘noise’ some of the contributions of ill informed critics and, of course, camera club judges who are often looking for something to say in order to justify their fee. The most dangerous area is where historians who often do not understand photography or photographic processes, make ‘ex cathedra’ (as Catholics would say) statements about old photographs. People sometimes believe what they say because of their expertise in history. You can imagine the outrage if the opposite was the case and some poor misguided photographer started to make comments about history!
I’ll leave it at that.
William
I have trouble understanding why the gallery felt compelled to offer ANY explanation for these photographs. After all, photography is a non-verbal art.
There are always people who have a few facts which makes them think they have knowledge. Perhaps this compulsion is related to self-aggrandizing?
Too much overthinking here.
Lee Friedlander: “Richard Benson (his friend and…well, look him up) once told me I wouldn’t recognize and idea if it bit me on the ass.”
Just go with the photos as they are. Nothing meant to be especially ground breaking or influential. Except they were/are.
Vivian Maier never published or exhibited during her lifetime. Friedlander did and his work became important because of its influence on several generations of photographers and artists. I’m 73 and I have difficulty remembering photography “Pre-Friedlander”.
..Nah, Dogman? ..you must remember this; all those hundreds of Cartier-Bresson pictures of yesteryear, Eugene Smith’s Minimata Japanese photos, I’m sure (..the people suffering from mercury poisoning..) and, if you lived in the UK, some Bert Hardy photos from Picture Post, a bit of Bill Brandt, baby Prince Charles photographed by Marcus Adams, Cecil Beaton’s society snaps ..and all those picture postcards from John Hinde and Francis Frith ..no?
It’s kind of refreshing to see a photographer, specially a well known one, who prefers small prints and thinks in series.