In his selection of 70 photographs by Lee Friedlander, acclaimed filmmaker Joel Coen focuses on Friedlander’s beautifully strange sense of composition, in which images are off kilter and visually dense, bisected and carved by stop signs and utility poles, store windows and reflections, car doors and windshields or shadows and trees. "As a filmmaker, I liked the idea of creating a sequence that would highlight Lee’s unusual approach to framing―his splitting, splintering, repeating, fracturing and reassembling elements into new and impossible compositions," Coen writes. Featuring work spanning more than 60 years, the book includes selections from some of Friedlander’s most celebrated series, including The American Monument, America by Car, The Little Screens and others, arranged to draw connections between form and composition rather than subject. In an afterword, renowned actor Frances McDormand describes the bond between the two artists: "they both capture and fill frames with sometimes simple and other times chaotically elaborate images that cause us all to wonder."
Joel Coen (born 1954) is an American filmmaker who, with his younger brother Ethan, has directed films such as Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, True Grit, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Burn After Reading, A Serious Man and Hail Caesar.
Lee Friedlander Framed by Joel Coen
Category: Photographer Monographs & Art Books
Reviews: star
star
star
star
star
Author: Lee Friedlander, Joel Coen, Frances McDormand
Publisher: Fraenkel Gallery
Publication Date:
2023
Print Length: 70 pages
Language: English
Price: paid
paid
paid
Selected Books by This Photographer
Books From the Same Publisher
Richard Learoyd
2019 - Fraenkel Gallery/Fundación Mapfre
Richard Learoyd, Sandra Phillips, Philip Gefter
expand_circle_rightLatest Books in This Category
John Baer: The Extraordinary Ordinary: A Memoir in Photographs, 1945–1954
Sep 2026 — John Baer Archive



