Those who know him insist Friedlander has no social agenda or overt message to peddle. "He's a looker," according to Janet Borden, director of Friedlander's New York gallery, Janet Borden, Inc. Even when the images portray trashy roadside signs or ramshackle houses, "It's more an observation," she says, "than a condemnation."
The photographs' apparent artlessness is deceiving. "He captures the wonder and excitement of the way all these elements get juxtaposed together," Mr. Brougher says. "The great photographers are able to simply photograph something right in front of you every day in a way that suddenly draws your attention to it."
Take, for example, a picture of a seafood shack in Fort Myers, Fla. The car door and side window frame a junky-looking restaurant whose facade sports American and Confederate flags, crab traps, and a large sculpture of a shark, its toothy mouth positioned to engulf a sign that says "LUNCH." The side-view mirror reflects another sign that says "CHARTER BOATS." The cluttered image breaks every rule of composition and subverts every cliché of "picturesque" photography.
Like cubist paintings, these photographs are multifaceted. "He's looking in various directions simultaneously, looking at the past and future happening at the same time, and you're caught in between the two, staring out the window," Brougher explains.
"America by Car" reveals much about car culture, the lure of the open road, and America's past and present. For Wade Lawrence, director of The Museum at Bethel Woods, N.Y. (destination of the ultimate road trip, the 1969 Woodstock festival), "the photographs say we're a car-oriented society." Noting that for some people, "tourism is checking off a list of the places they've driven through," he cautions that if drive-by sighting is the only way we experience our culture, "[then] we've lost a lot. Obviously there's no interactivity between people or discovery of indigenous culture." [Editor's note: The original version incorrectly stated the name of The Museum at Bethel Woods.]
