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For a very long while I was on a big Friedlander kick. To me he is (or was, back in his prime) incomparable at seeing and compressing layers into perfectly formed compositions. His photos are like salads, little of this, little of that, a telephone pole here, a church roof there, presto. He got into my system around the time I first began to get serious about photography and I found myself imitating his style. I carried around a zoom which I often used fully extended and at f/16, the better to compress layers. Not that Friedlander used a zoom. I guess the zoom was in his head. Anyway, going out photographing became more of a mental excercise than a spiritual one. I'd look for interesting shapes which I could combine using the zoom into my own photographic salads.
I look back now on most of these photos and they bore me to tears. They aren't really about anything beyond themselves. I guess the thing about Friedlander is that he did it first, and he did it better. Most of mine look like what they are, mental excercises with no emotional resonance attempting to imitate someone famous. Nevertheless several years of shooting that style really sharpened my eye for layering. I still find myself lining shots up all the time. Most of these shots stay in my head while the camera stays at my side, but a few of them get photographed. Some of these are presented here in Lineups. Lineups are layered photographs which through the combination of simple forms create some larger form, and which do so simply and economically. Lineups last update: January 2005 |