Exhibition Text
The Kicken Gallery in Berlin is honoring Lee Friedlander (born in 1934) with a presentation of a small collection of important works at Kicken II. Friedlander paved the way for the evolution of photography in the 1970’s and coined the phrase “Social Landscape”, which was to be advanced in the “New Topographics” movement. Friedlander’s compact imagery is less about beauty and more about a certain method of examining objective reality. In concentrating on a perception of his surroundings which acknowledges his own involvement in what is being photographed, he creates his own school, which goes beyond street photography. Today, he must be considered among the classics of 20th century photography, a role underlined by the fact that Friedlander is the recipient of this year’s renowned Hasselblad award honoring his life’s work. The presentation in Kicken Berlin Gallery accompanies the extensive retrospective organized by the MoMA in New York at the Haus der Künste in Munich. (Ronald Berg)
