“Beautiful to Open and Pleasurable to Leaf Through: The Art and Craft of Reproduction in Lee Friedlander’s Early Photobooks”
Photographer Lee Friedlander had been shooting film since the 1950s, but it was not until the ‘70s that he became interested in putting his work into book format. For his first solo book project, Self Portrait, he was teamed up with Richard Benson of the Meridan Gravure Company in Connecticut, and as a collaborative team they helped revolutionize offset lithographic printing for the world of photography. Friedlander has prolifically produced photobooks ever since, and his output raises questions about the nature of reproduction, the role of craft in the art of photographs in ink, and how the book format necessarily changes the viewing experience for photography.