Vincent Borrelli, Bookseller

Lee Friedlander: Cherry Blossom Time in Japan: The Complete Works [SIGNED]

FRIEDLANDER, Lee

Publisher: San Francisco: Fraenkel Gallery, 2006
Edition: 1st Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: As New / No dust jacket as issued
Item #: 114255

$325.00

Specifics

Price is net to all; promotional discounts do not apply.

First edition, first printing. Signed by Friedlander on the title page. Hardcover. Brilliant green and fuchsia paper-covered boards, with bold calligraphic emblem title printed in black on both covers, and again printed in green and fuschia on black spine. Photographs by Lee Friedlander. Includes a list of plates. Calligraphy by Shuntei Taniguchi. Designed by Katy Homans. 160 pp., with 73 tritone plates exquisitely printed on heavy matte art paper by Danny Frank of Meridian Printing, East Greenwich, Rhode Island, from separations by Thomas Palmer. 8-1/4 x 11-1/4 inches.

Lee Friedlander’s work is widely known for transforming our visual understanding of contemporary American culture. Known for passionately embracing all subject matter, Friedlander photographed nearly every facet of American life from the 1950s to the present. From factories in Pennsylvania, to the jazz scene in New Orleans, to the deserts of the Southwest, Friedlander's complex formal visual strategies continue to influence the way we understand, analyze, and experience modern American experience. Friedlander's work continues to influence photographic practice internationally, in part due to the heightened sense of self-awareness that is a trademark of so many of his photographs and in part because of his ability to embrace wide-ranging subject matter, always interpreting it in an elegance that hadn't existed prior to his work.

Condition

As New (from Friedlander's personal archive).

Description

The book is really two books bound together, and can be read in two directions; one half features horizontally oriented plates and text, while the other half is vertically oriented. Each section proceeds from its cover to center, where they meet with a list of plates and colophon page.

From the artist: "I first went to Japan in 1977 and found the whole country ablaze with blossom. I went again in 1979, 1981 and 1984, always at cherry blossom time. As far as I knew, Japan was always abloom."

From the publisher: "Lee Friedlander's newest publication, Cherry Blossom Time in Japan: The Complete Works, presents, for the first time, the complete set of 73 images that the artist made during his four trips to Japan. The groundbreaking black and white images--first seen as 25 photogravures in a 1986 portfolio, and long out of print--appear as examples of radical picture-making even 20 years later, as few serious photographers would have dared to photograph cherry blossoms with anything other than color film at that time. The result is a new kind of beauty, with many of the compositions bordering on visual chaos. The images collected here serve as a precursor for much of Friedlander's late landscape work, which was exhibited to great acclaim in his 2005 Museum of Modern Art retrospective.

Printed by the laborious dry-trap process, the amazingly sensuous reproductions closely approximate the original prints. Friedlander oversaw the book's production and was involved in every aspect of printing and design. [This] is Friedlander's forty-ninth book since 1969, and evidences a master at the peak of his form."