Lee Friedlander: The Desert Seen [Hardcover]

Lee Friedlander (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2, 1996

This volume is photographer Lee Friedlander's tribute to the extraordinary landscape of the American Southwest, an incomparable record of the Sonoran Desert's timeless beauty.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This collection of black-and-white photographs of the Sonoran desert runs counter to the current fashion for coffee-table art photography that emphasizes austere, stylized, isolated figures. Lee Friedlander's images are packed with detail, and the desert of this book is far from empty, but teems with life and visual richness. His landscapes are not sweeping panoramas, instead, they pull in dozens of directions at once. Often there is no apparent center, but many points of interest; branches and thorns of cholla, saguaro, and other cactuses do not so much frame the photos as invade them. In an introductory essay Freidlander aptly compares his work to his other love: jazz.

Review

... one of America's most important living photographers ... The Desert Seen contains some of the jazziest of any of his photographs. -- The New York Times Book Review, Andy Grundberg

Product Details

• Hardcover: 108 pages
• Publisher: D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, Inc. (September 2, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1881616754
• ISBN-13: 978-1881616757
• Product Dimensions: 12.5 x 11.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,587,456 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Friedlander's images leave nothing to chance., September 20, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Colorado Springs) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lee Friedlander: The Desert Seen (Hardcover)

At the end of his book, The Desert Seen, Friedlander quotes from the film, "My Little Chickadee" - "A cowboy sits down to a game of cards with W.C. Fields and says, 'Is this a game of chance?' W.C. Fields responds, "No Sir, not the way I play it."

In his timeless images of the desert seen, Friedlander leaves nothing to chance. To the critic from Berea, Kentucky, look again, and keep looking again and again.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars glaring friedlander, December 11, 2001

By 

Amy Alvarez (Buffalo, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lee Friedlander: The Desert Seen (Hardcover)

After spending the last 15 yrs. looking through Friedlanders photographs, I rate this book equal to "The American Monument", his tour de force. No photographer has ever visualized the desert "forest" as he has. He photographs the harshness of the desert light along with the harshness of its plants with his new format, the ultrawide Hasselblad. The combination of technique and his unique vision make this book groundbreaking for this artist.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One man, two eyes, a camera and cactus, March 19, 2001

By 

Geoffrey P. Smith "opusposthum" (ATLANTA, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Lee Friedlander: The Desert Seen (Hardcover)

Masterly photography, beautifully produced book and it includes the best essay on what it means to live as a photographer and seeker that I have read. This is deceptive work, the product of a formidable visual intelligence, and it leaves most contemporary 'art' photography eating its Sonora Desert dust. I like this book as an odyssey through a wildly beautiful landscape, with individual photographs pulling me back time and again to ponder another detail. A 'Difficult Love', but definitely a book to live with.