The New Cars 1964
2011
$135.00
The New Cars 1964 by Lee Friedlander. First edition. First impression. Medium format hardback in fine condition. No markings. Binding firm, pages clean. Please see pictures. PayPal accepted, any questions please get in touch.
About The New Cars 1964
In 1964, two young art directors at Harper’s Bazaar named Ruth Ansel and Bea Feitler hired the then up and coming photographer Lee Friedlander. They hired him to photograph the much anticipated new car models of that year. Friedlander’s jazz album covers had proven he knew how to work on assignment. Ansel and Feitler realized that if Bazaar was to obtain the photographer’s best work he should be let alone to make it. It’s difficult now to comprehend how anticipated next year’s cars were to Americans of the 1960s. But if Friedlander was aware of this, the photographs he delivered (on time) don’t betray it.
Rather than depicting the cars in seductive locales, he had them delivered to parking lots near burger joints, cheap furniture stores, downscale beauty parlors. As well as, most ignominiously of all, a used car lot. As Friedlander says, “I just put the cars out in the world, instead of on a pedestal.” The magazine’s editor in chief was unamused, fearing that the photographs would deter car manufacturers from advertising in Harper’s, so Friedlander was paid for his work and the photographs were soon forgotten, until he then stumbled across them in 2010. Even a cursory study of this project reveals a compendium of strategies that would soon bring Friedlander acclaim and wreak havoc with widely accepted notions of what constituted a good photograph. Now, the Continentals, Eldorados and Mercury Meteors of 1964 have their day in this beautifully produced volume.
Related Links
More books by Lee Friedlander here.
More books by Fraenkel Gallery here.
