You can live a lifetime and, at the end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself. You learn to watch other people, but you never learn to watch yourself because you strive against loneliness. If you read a book, or shuffle a deck of cards, or care for a dog, you are avoiding yourself. The abhorrence of loneliness is as natural as wanting to live at all. If it were otherwise, men would never have bothered to make an alphabet, nor to have fashioned words out of what were only animal sounds, nor to have crossed continents – each man to see what the other looked like.
From: Markham, Beryl, West With the Night, North Point Press, 1985
Serial Portraits reveals Lee Friedlander's ongoing exploration of a number of specific individuals over a forty year period of time. This exhibition affords Friedlander the opportunity to assemble and present these powerful individual images, images of Kitaj, John Szarkowski, Garry Winogrand and Friedlander's family… in meaningful groups mapping the relationships between Friedlander and a selection of his subjects.
Perhaps it is commonly perceived that Lee Friedlander is one of the great American photographers placing him primarily in the 1960's and 70's within the realm of historical photography. This exhibition emphasizes his continued practice and significance. With the span of years, the exhibition incorporates both vintage and newly printed images.
This exhibition coincides with Lee Friedlander's exhibition of new photographs of his family, at Janet Borden, Inc.