Thesis & Background:

                                        America by [the Safety of my] Car

For my final project, I have chosen to study the aristic voice and photographic expression of photographer Lee Friedlander, using his photobook America By Car as a basis for my analysis. Friedlander was born in Aberdeen, Washington to Polish, Jewish parents in 1934. Although he grew up with an interest in photography, his dedication to the craft accelerated when he enrolled at the Art Center College of Design, located in Pasadena California. After graduating, Friedlander moved to New York and began photographing Jazz musicians in portrait style collaborations. However, as his career continued, Friedlander began to distinguish himself for his photographic work on what is deemed the “social landscape”. Through his work on social landscape, Friedlander was able to take pictures of mundane infrastructure (buildings, signs, etc.), but create a strong awareness of the relationship between Friedlander and his subject by immaculate and precise form. This work was defined by his acclaimed exhibitions “Toward a Social Landscape” (1966) at the George Eastman House and the exhibition “New Documents” (1967) at the Museum of Modern Art.

When researching a photobook to study, America By Car interested me due to the current Covid-19 Pandemic. The photobook features Friedlander’s social landscape photography through the perspective of his car. For me, this symbolizes the epitome of American society and why immigrants come to society. Exploring the country by car creates a sense of the American frontier and becomes symbolic of expansion. This American cornerstone of expansion and endless opportunity is currently at a time of uncertainty. Through this pandemic, American society is already in the early stages of the largest depression since the Great Depression. Therefore, I thought it would become an important contrast to capture the depletion and devastation of American ideals and economic life through a vehicle that became synonymous with economic expansion, the automobile. When taking into consideration Friedlander’s identity as a Jew, I argue that Friedlander was able to externally render his experience as an American Jew. Friedlander is visibly able to see the opportunities and expansiveness that American society can offer. However, Friedlander is unable to fully participate in these opportunities as he is an outsider, separated through the vehicle of his car. Therefore, I contented that through my own work, I will also learn about the restraint’s and restrictions as a young Jewish American, entering a society where opportunity is scarce for all. When going through America By Car, there were three photographs that interested me due to their immaculate form and aesthetic.

In the first picture I will explore, Friedlander is able to take a self-portrait through the side-view mirror of the car. This is one of the most interesting self-portraits I have seen, as it places Friedlander as a small focus within a larger image. The sign for an auto-repair shop looms over the small mirror in which Friedlander is placed, immediately creating a distinct relationship between him and American society (Left, America by Car, Friedlander, 28). The audience understands who Friedlander is, in the context of the society in which he is placed. Instead of an isolated image or version of himself, the viewers perception of Friedlander is influenced by his immediate surrounding. Through the portrait he is a member of American society, but deeply isolated and alone (detached through the safety of his car).

 

Pictured on the right (Friedlander, 33), a second form of photography I aim to study from America by Car is Friedlander’s use of the car itself to create a self-reflexive frame for the image he captured outside the motor vehicle. In the picture, Friedlander uses his front window to create a frame for a desolate and long country road. The point-of-view from which the photograph was taken, behind the steering wheel of Friedlander’s car, creates a theatrical representation of Friedlander himself and the process from which he took the photograph. In some way, the car represents an extension of Friedlander himself. The steering wheel becomes a representation, and he is able to place himself in the photograph.  Most importantly, however, it creates an awareness for the viewer of the process of taking the picture. It reminds the viewer that the photograph is an artistic representation of how Friedlander viewed the social landscape of American society.  This creates a very complex photograph, with multiple layers and frames within the picture. I am interested in it because aesthetically, he used the car itself to create the frame.

Lastly, pictured in the photograph below (Friedlander, 99), Friedlander uses the side-view mirror to capture elements behind him of a forest and place them in the context of what he is capturing in front of him (an advertisement for a direct-to-home escort service). This creates an immediate contrast in the photograph between nature and civilization. It brings an awareness that American expansion is not sustainable and is at the cost of nature.

 

 

Daniel,

This is an excellent opening statement for your project. Here are a couple of pointers going forward (and to edit this statement).

First, please use italics when referring to a title of a book.

Second, break up your paragraphs. Long paragraphs don’t work well online. Short ones do. So, for example, your first sentence could be a paragraph. “However . . . ” could begin a third paragraph. Similarly, in the second long paragraph, consider “When going through . . . ” as a new paragraph.

Third, please add the photos that you want to discuss and potentially emulate. I know what they are, but other people looking at this will not. You may be able to find the photos already online of you can scan them and upload them. It is best to place them next to your discussion of them. (They’re wonderful choices.)

Fourth, please capitalize Great Depression.

You’ve written a thoughtful analysis of the current social landscape. Taking Friedlaender as your guide for this final project is a great idea. I look forward to seeing how the final project develops.

DDM

America By Car creates an extremely structured basis and form to model taking photographs off of because all of the pictures are taken from the point of view of a driver in a car. However, the full process Friedlander went through to make the photo book is one that I cannot completely replicate due to logistical issues. Funded by a guggenheim fellowship, Friedlander created the photobook by driving through all fifty states over the course of fifteen years, and taking pictures from his car of landscapes that he viewed exemplified the eccentricity of American culture at the turn of the century. Instead of organizing his photobook by state and year, Friedlander organized America by Car by subject. For example, Friedlander will have one section with photographs of churches from different states, another section with build boards from different states, and a third section with photographs of people from different states. Friedlander did not provoke any performances of people in his pictures. They are all honest and authentic representations of the landscape and people that created the social atmosphere of American society. The photographs are also extremely metta, and self aware. The framing of the car creates an awareness of the mechanical and technological aspect of the photograph. It reminds the reader that Friedlander was in his car, capturing this moment through the lens of his camera. Furthermore, Friedlander brilliantly uses the mechanical aspect of the car (wiper blades, windows, rear and side-view mirrors) to enhance the aesthetic composition of his pictures. 

Notably, I will not be able to travel to all fifty states, and create a group of photographs that represent the diversity and similarity of American society at the beginning of this new decade. What I will be able to do, however, is use different angles, and photographic techniques to create a diversity in the photographs that I take around my hometown of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Furthermore, due to the timing of when this assignment is due, I will not be able to spend fifteen years studying how these different social attitudes present in Philadelphia become a microcosm that is representative of the mentality of American society. However, I will be able to accurately capture and photograph this very specific period in time. I aim to use the same methodology Friedlander employed to capture the anxieties of an American society on the fritz of economic collapse. While Friedlander was an outsider to the expanding opportunities the 2000s promised through his identity and physical distance, I will be able to capture being an outsider to my community, unable to help in a time of uncertainty.

Using Friedlander as an inspiration, I sought to capture three types of photographs around the Philadelphia metro area from the perspective of my car: the self-portrait, the vastness of empty space, and the contrast between nature and civilization. While Friedlander focused on America at the turn of the century, I plan to photograph America in the face of the world’s worst pandemic since the 1918 Spanish flu, Covid-19. From the photographs I identified in my introduction, I plan to create photography that models their essence, but differentiates to reflect current issues.

For example, in Friedlander’s self-portraits, he was in various locations throughout the country. To me, this reflected his personal freedom to travel and experience opportunity at a distance. In contrast, I plan to take my self-portraits in my drive-way. Through this, the geography outside my car becomes symbolic of my own freedoms with the shelter in place orders established from Covid-19. I am trapped and cannot roam.

For my second thematic section, I plan to capture emptiness where there is mean’t to be fullness. When Friedlander captured open plains, there is something calming about them. The plains are mean’t to be empty. However, I wish to capture an eery feeling of abnormal. Shopping centers, and roads that are mean’t to carry human traffic, but are no longer serving their purpose. 

For my third section, I plan to follow Friedlander and contrast nature and civilization. This section acts as a constant, bridging the time gap between my work and Friedlanders. By photographing nature, Friedlander and I are able to illuminate the inability for opportunity to last forever, and the unavoidable opposition nature presents.

Self-Portraits:

   

(Friedlander, 28)

 

The Empty Frontier:

    . 

(Friedlander, 33)

Nature Looms:

. 

(Friedlander, 99)

 

 

Daniel,

The methodology you outline is relatively brief. One of the challengesyou will face is the absence of people to provide scale. I hope that you will also consider experimenting with self portraits as Friedlander did. Even though you don’t have a scanner, you may be able to find some of the photographs on line (e.g. at the Whitney exhibit https://whitney.org/Exhibitions/LeeFriedlander).

DDM

 

Photo Gallery of All Pictures Taken 

Slide Show 1- Business Signs

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Slide Show 2- Take Out

 

 

Analysis of Photographs

Is photography an artform? Although Alfred Stieglitz spent the latter half of his career defending this question, I remained unconvinced, and unwavering in my belief that mechanical reproduction could be an artform. My generation grew up inundated with technology that creates ease in regard to taking and sharing photographs, desensitizing us to the idea it could be considered art. The mundanity and accessibility to images separates it from the high tower and scarceness of other arts, be it ballet, sculpting or classical music. Photography is the main way society currently communicates. For example, my instagram page totes 211 photographs, while my camera roll has a daunting 2,849 photographs in it. Therefore, the logic is simple: if I can with no formal training, or even awareness of the craft involved in taking the picture, photography, then itself is not an art.

However, I was wrong. My opinion changed after taking photographs for my website, intended to evoke a style and homage to Lee Friedlander’s book America By Car. When I first viewed the pictures in Friedlander’s photobook, I was in awe of his ability to capture the mundanity of the American social landscape from the view of his car. The car was essential to me, as it represented perfectly the capitalist roots of American society during the 1950s, constantly vying for economic growth. With this as my basis, I had both an aesthetic and social construct I wanted to evoke through my photographs, but quickly learned I lack the technical skill to execute said photographs successfully. As a result, my appreciation for the skill Lee Friedlander demonstrates through his mastery of representing the American social landscape of the 1950s increased. By failing to replicate his photographs, I noticed a new level of detail that I missed when previously viewing his photographs and process.

In terms of process, one technical challenge arises rather quickly: how do you drive and take photographs at the same time? I found myself constantly missing great photographic opportunities because I did not have time to properly stop my car and take the image. Another issue that occurred is if I was driving too fast, the image would come out blurry and out of focus. The other aspect of the Friedlander’s photographic process that I had not paid attention to was his interaction with his subjects. Unlike other photographers who can take photographs more subtly and from a great distance, I found that taking pictures from my car drew a great deal of attention to myself. This was exacerbated when I would have to quickly stop the car and take a picture on a mostly uncrowded street due to the shelter-in-place orders. The main issue with this was I either offended people by taking a candid and natural photograph of them without asking, or I asked permission and got an extremely performative and staged looking picture.

This issue of taking pictures was not limited to photographing people. When I took a photograph of a local pizza shop, the owner came outside and asked for me to tag him if I posed it on social media. The visibility and attention drawn to myself, and potentially Friedlander, when photographing from a car, was a challenge of America By Car I had not considered.

Beyond new considerations regarding Friedlander’s process, I also began an exploration into his aesthetic approach after trying to replicate his work. The first aesthetically similar photograph I tried to take was by using the side-view-mirror on my car to capture an image behind me and place it within the context of the image also in front of the camera. Friedlander used this photographic style repeatedly, and it evoked a very unique 360-degree photograph, capturing the entire environment.

The first photograph I tried to take using this technique was a self-portrait. However, the rear-view mirror only captured my camera frame, and not me, with a blurred frontward image. I probably took around thirty photographs trying to work out how Friedlander took his photographs through the side-view-mirror. The photograph is almost impossible to take, as you constantly have to maneuver angles and positioning to capture both images in focus, not to mention the fact that Friedlander had no way to check if his photographs were in focus while he was taking them. After toying around for a while, I was able to capture a photograph with a picture of a convenience store in the front titled Wawa, and trees in the background. This was probably my favorite photograph that I took.

Taking this picture led me to my next discovery about Friedlander: the intention behind his photographs fueled their aesthetic creativity. Friedlander had a very clear objective when taking his pictures for the photobook. Friedlander wanted to capture America’s eccentricities and social obsessions at the turn of the 20th century. The inspiration for Friedlander’s aesthetic is clear. His use of rear-view and side-view mirrors to juxtapose background objections with images in the foreground overwhelms the screen with too much stimulus. It evokes a feeling of the non-stop nature of American society. This idea that the world we live in is too full and moving too fast. When I began trying to copy Friedlander’s aesthetics through my pictures, I had no intention beyond copying how his pictures looked. However, the picture I took over Wawa was different. I had an epiphany of what I wanted to portray and managed to capture.

Throughout the crisis of Covid-19, I have been contemplating the idea of global warming and capitalism. This unrealistic idea of unsustainable economic growth, and the fact that governments have been silent on implementing policies that diminish emissions. While thinking this in my car, I look up and see the Wawa sign stating that it now delivers. I started laughing at the simple truth of time: nature always conquers, and if governments will not slow down the rate of human movement, nature will. I then noticed that there was a cluster of trees behind me. I managed to capture them through my side-view-mirror. The goal of the photograph was to evoke the message that nature will interrupt, and alter society, if we society do not manage it ourselves.

 

 

Daniel,

You have very good photos and your discussion of the photo of Wawa is great, especially with the tree in the side mirror. I hope that you have the rest of what you were going to say. I like several of your photos that use the side mirror as well as the ones you begin the gallery with. Looking forward to the rest of your analysis.

DDM

Your discussion of the Wawa photograph is excellent. You note the tree in the mirror, but there is also a tree protruding in front of the Wawa sign. Both trees speak to the analysis that you offer.

It would be good to shorten the paragraphs for online reading. So, in your last paragraph, consider starting a new paragraph, “Throughout the crisis . . . ”

Your discovery of the challenges of photographing people is very clearly expressed. Along with your recognition of how the simple in a photograph is actually complex, you’ve come to learn a lot from the project.

DDM

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The process of taking my own pictures made me understand the Jewish identity of my own photographer more. Before taking the pictures, I had not given enough value to how and why being Jewish would have impacted Friedlander. The role of an outsider weighed heavily on me as I took the pictures. From the safety of my car, I was completely isolated and removed from the community I was photographing. Even though I grew up in Philadelphia my entire life, I felt disconnected and uncomfortable taking photographs from my car. As people watched me take the photographs, they also became uncomfortable. There was a tension of distrust between myself and the community I aimed to preserve. I imagine this innate sense of being an outsider was heightened for Friedlander, as he traveled to all fifty states. His identity as a Jew in towns and cities he was not from, must have made Friedlander feel even more of an outsider. Therefore, his willingness to intentionally place himself in uncomfortable situations speaks to the Jewish sensibility behind taking his pictures: preservation. At the heart of Jewish photography is preservation of people, societies and ways of life. For Friedlander, he wanted to preserve American eccentricities and ways of life at the turn of the 21th century.

Daniel,

Good conclusion and a provocative one. You’ve identified a tension in taking photographs that you can realize only when you start to take them yourself. I appreciate that you connected this to Friedlander’s subject position as a Jew that fueled both his desire to take the photographs and process of taking them with his larger concerns regarding American society.

When you go to make final edits on the project, please identify Friedlander’s photographs and give him credit.

The phrase “turn of the 20th century” should really be “turn of the 21st century” unless you want to refer to the fin de siecle, meaning the 20th century’s end.

DDM

Conclusion: Did you come to understand your Jewish photographer differently after taking your own photos? What did you learn about your thesis?

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/lee-friedlander-american-icon

https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2010/09/02/129601810/

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qbxpwq/the-whole-picture-0000596-v22n3

https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/lee-friedlander?all/all/all/all/0

https://whitney.org/Exhibitions/LeeFriedlander

Lee Friedlander: America by Car

 

 

 

 

Sources: List of all your sources with hyperlinks. Be sure to separate photo sources from written research sources.