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New York City
New York City
New York City

New York City

Maker (American, b. 1934)
Date1964, printed 1978
MediumGelatin silver print
DimensionsImage: 8 1/4 × 12 5/16 in. (21 × 31.3 cm)
Sheet: 13 7/8 × 11 in. (35.2 × 27.9 cm)
Credit LineGift of the Estate of Lester and Betty Guttman
Object number2014.335
Status
Not on view
Description
Using a 35mm Leica camera, Lee Friedlander focuses his lens on everyday people, places, and things, creating images that belong to the genre of street photography. He exposes numerous rolls of film and then chooses the best pictures to print from his contact sheets. This photograph is typical of Friedlander’s offbeat documentation of the American social landscape. The use of architecture, windows, and signage as framing devices, the ambiguity of the situation, and the asymmetry and fragmentation of the scene within a scene were among Friedlander’s photographic trademarks. Although his images are uninflected, they suggest an uneasy urban tension, evidenced here by the man asleep at his desk in the middle of the day. Because Friedlander repeatedly photographed the same cities, streets, and types of scenes, he has occasionally been compared to early twentieth-century photographer Eugène Atget, arguably the world’s first systematic street photographer.
Untitled (Glass Roof of Pennsylvania Station, New York City)
Untitled (Glass Roof of Pennsylvania Station, New York City)
Walker Evans
circa 1928 - 1929 (negative, printed 1980)
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Untitled (New York City Street Corner, High Angle View)
Walker Evans
circa 1929 (negative, printed 1980)
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New York City Skyscrapers, Abstract Detail
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circa 1929 (negative, printed 1980)
Untitled (New York City Streetcorner, High Angle View)
Untitled (New York City Streetcorner, High Angle View)
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Untitled (New York City, Lincoln Building Construction, 42nd Street and Park Avenue)
Untitled (New York City, Lincoln Building Construction, 42nd Street and Park Avenue)
Walker Evans
1929 - 1930 (negative, printed 1980)
Untitled (New York City, Lincoln Building Construction, 42nd Street and Park Avenue)
Untitled (New York City, Lincoln Building Construction, 42nd Street and Park Avenue)
Walker Evans
1929 - 1930 (negative, printed 1980)
Washington Street, New York CIty/Wash Day
Washington Street, New York CIty/Wash Day
Walker Evans
circa 1930 (negative, printed 1980)
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Washington Street, New York CIty/Wash Day
Walker Evans
circa 1930 (negative, printed 1980)
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Walker Evans
circa 1931 (negative, printed 1974)
City Light Box Study, New York 1944
City Light Box Study, New York 1944
Nathan Lerner
1944 (negative, printed 1983)
Untitled (New York City)
Untitled (New York City)
Ben Shahn
1932 - 1935
New York City [Chinese characters on store window and cats]
New York City [Chinese characters on store window and cats]
Elliott Erwitt
1955