ABOUT

Enduring icons of American culture, the car and the highway remain vital as auguries of adventure and discovery, and a means by which to take in the country's vast scale. Lee Friedlander is the first photographer to make the car an actual "form" for making photographs. Driving across most of the country's 50 states in an ordinary rental car, Friedlander applied the brilliantly simple conceit of deploying the sideview mirror, rearview mirror, the windshield and the side windows as a picture frame within which to record the country's eccentricities and obsessions at the turn of the century. This method allows for fascinating effects in foreshortening, and wonderfully telling juxtapositions in which steering wheels, dashboards and leatherette bump up against roadside bars, motels, churches, monuments, suspension bridges, landscapes and often Friedlander's own image, via sideview mirror shots.