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 Lake Park, Milwaukee, 1992 Knowed for his complex, idiosyncratic picture-making, Lee Friedlander began photographing Olmsted parks for a 1988 commission from the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. The artist's interest in landscape, however, began much earlier, and he continued to photograph Olmsted parks long after he completed the commission. In addition to numerous photographs of Central Park, the Friedlander photos include Brooklyn's Prospect Park; Manhattan's Riverside Park; World's End in Hingham, Mass.; and Cherokee Park in Louisville, Ky. Friedlander's camera focuses on Olmsted's use of stone, trees and grasses and careful balance of sun and shade, exploring a variety of camera formats and perspectives.  The Met exhibition will be accompanied by the publication of Lee Friedlander Photographs: Frederick Law Olmstead Landscapes. The Met notes, "The photographs offer fresh appreciation for Olmsted parks as invented worlds designed to delight the eye and offer, as Olmsted wrote, ???healthful recreation' for the public. By providing worthy testimony to our era's renewed interest in preserving the finest landscape architecture of the nineteenth century, Friedlander's black-and-white photographs celebrate the essential pleasures of seeing and being in these living works of art." The exhibition will be accompanied by the publication of Lee Friedlander Photographs: Frederick Law Olmstead Landscapes, including 89 images and an introduction by the artist. The exhibition will also coincide with the publication of the Museum's Winter 2008 Bulletin, featuring an essay on the history of the creation of Central Park by Morrison Heckscher, the Lawrence A. Fleischman chairman of the Met's American Wing. The exhibition will be featured on the Museum's website, metmuseum.org |
