Lee Friedlander

Lee Friedlander is an American photographer and artist, who became very influential in the 1960's and 70's because he created a very unique style of photographing urban landscapes, this included capturing shop window reflections, buildings that were framed by fences, posters and street signs. His work was most taken on a 35mm Leica with a black and white film, which I think gives his photographs a very socially involved feel to them, because it allows Friedlander to get up close to his subjects.
His shop window reflection technique was also very new for its time, and really well because it captured what life was like on the inside and outside on the shop which thus gave the viewer a kind of social view of life at the time from two different angles in one image. These reflection images provide a lot of visual information for the viewer because they spend a while figuring out whats the reflection and whats not.
As you can see from these photographs, Friedlander's work was very socially aware as all of his reflections images captured people within them, usually on the inside and outside of the reflection as can be seen from this photograph. I think more than any think these photographs work well in representing to the viewer, in an unusual way, what life was like in the 60s and 70s.

After photographing Chinatown, Northern Quarter and the first shoot of Curry Mile, I wanted to do an experiment which meant changing how my subject would be standing within the shop they work in. This change would be influenced by Lee Friedlander's 'At Work' photographs.

Friedlander changed his technique quite drastically for his set of images which related to his title of 'At Work', for this project he still focused on social aspects of life but instead of shooting outside in the street he went and photographed people at their job. Something which contrasts his and my style of working is that his images look like they are shot without the subject knowing (candid), although what is more likely is that Friedlander has been allowed into the specific workplace to shoot, and then he's told people to carry on with what they're doing and to ignore the camera. Doing this allows him to create well composed images of people at work while seeming like the subjects are oblivious to the camera.  The places he chose to photograph were very hands on places, such as sewing and carpentry factories.













For my project I'm going to try and use Friedlander's techniques of capturing the subject interacting with something they sell or make, but using my continued technique of capturing a portrait of them which they are fully aware of. So basically I'm going to try and take the hands on aspect of his images which photograph people mid-work and apply them to my portrait based work. This development will be applied to my next shoot on the Curry Mile.