This
image is taken in the style of a documentary in Las Vegas, Nevada,
2002. As if Friedlander is documenting his memories across the roads
of America. Friedlander has spent a lot of his life on the road
travelling and he was able to capture some of the wonders through his
travels. With his incredible eye for extreme composition and wit he
could fit huge amounts of detail into the frame of the rental cars he
used. The use of light, dynamic lines, reflection and distance is
incredible. The whole image is in full detail and every part of the
image has something that compliments the other. The contrast from the
inside of the car and the city of Las Vegas is huge; this makes the
buildings, statues and the frame of the wing mirror stand out.
Dynamic lines find themselves shooting all over the image. The bottom
window frame goes from one side to the other. The other part of the
window frame connects with the line where the door and car interior
meet. The traffic light pole splits the cityscape in two where the
top of the buildings are in one section and the middle to ground is
in the other. Then the reflection in the mirror gives the audience a
new perspective, it shows what’s behind the image, where it has
come from. There is also a focal point where the window frame,
traffic pole and the top of a building meets; this automatically
draws the audience’s eyes to it.
The
series of 192 images have been displayed in an exhibition with
several on one wall and very close together. They were then grouped
based on content and not where or when it was taken. Friedlander’s
influence for this body of work was due to his own humour and his own
view of the world over the steering wheel of a rental car.
This
image is titled New York City, 1963. There is a hybrid of the
socially engaged documentary style photography to make this image;
Friedlander has also incorporated the spontaneous nature of post war
street photography. This image was taken in order to document the
American social landscape. In his work he refrains himself from
making strong social statements in order for his image to simply be
an accurate document of the time period.
In
this image Friedlander has made some ‘amateur’ mistakes. The
models are hidden by the columns and his own reflection is in the
glass window. Yet I think that he has taken it at that moment for a
reason, to show inequality of men and women and how they should be
the same. This is because they are walking towards each other into
the unknown space in the middle, even he doesn’t know what would
happen in the middle. The clothing of the models also explains the
social class of them both. The setting has also framed the models
which puts them into their own space, making them defined. The dark
clothing is the only thing the two models share. The lighting is all natural and is shown by the shadows by the models feet and the reflection. The clear reflection of himself and the man behind him shows the difference of the intensity in and out of the sun because the man behind him is far more defined.
Unlike other practitioners I have researched so far Friedlander used mostly black and white. This adds a sense of professionalism to his work considering the 'mistakes' that he has made. I think that this is what allowed him to gain some credit for his work easier than others like Eggleston. Eggleston was one of the first to use colour in fine art photography and this documented everything that he saw infront of him. However black and white is an illusion because the world is not B&W; therefore it is not a true documentation. This has convinced me that colour images is the way that I should take my own work.
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