Book Launch and Talk /
“Lee Friedlander: The Little Screens,” with Saul Anton
Date: Wednesday, 23 September 2015, 7–9 pm
Location: Cabinet, 300 Nevins Street, Brooklyn (map and directions here)
FREE. No RSVP necessary
Please join us to celebrate the publication of Saul Anton’s book Lee Friedlander: The Little Screens (Afterall Books, 2015). The evening will feature a talk by Anton at 7:30 pm, followed by Q&A and drinks.
Lee Friedlander’s “The Little Screens” first appeared as a 1963 photo-essay in Harper’s Bazaar, with commentary by Walker Evans. Six untitled photographs showed television screens broadcasting eerily glowing images of faces and figures into unoccupied rooms in homes and motels across America. As distinctive a portrait of an era as Robert Frank’s The Americans, “The Little Screens” grew in number, and the series was never shown together in its entirety until a 2001 exhibition at the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco.
Friedlander (b. 1934) is known for his use of surfaces and reflections—from storefront windows to landscapes viewed through car windshields—to present a pointed view of American life. The photographs that make up “The Little Screens” represent an early example of this photographic strategy, offering the narrative of a peripatetic photographer moving through the landscape of a 1960s America in thrall to a new medium.
In his book, Anton argues that “The Little Screens” marked the historical intersection of modern art and photography at the moment when television came into its own as the dominant medium of mass culture. Friedlander’s images, Anton shows, reflect the competing logics of the museum and print and electronic media, and anticipate the issues that have emerged with the transition to a world of ubiquitous “little screens.”
About the Author
Saul Anton is a writer, scholar, and critic. He is the author of the critical fiction Warhol’s Dream (JRP|Ringier, 2007) and has written for Afterall, Artforum, Cabinet, frieze, and other publications. He holds a PhD in French literature from Princeton University and has taught at the Pratt Institute, New York University, Princeton University, and the Tyler School of Art.
Beer for this event has been lovingly provided by Brooklyn Brewery.
Refreshments courtesy of Sprizz-O.
