In the Picture

Throughout his long career as a photographer and artist, Friedlander has produced five books of self-portraits. What makes this latest (and, one hopes, not last) volume of self-portraiture exceptional is its inclusion of five decades of work and many never-before-seen images. The pictures are arranged chronologically, and together they become a kind of de facto visual biography of the artist. Readers see Friedlander, his family, his friends, and his travels over the span of decades. The book is a wonderful record, too, of changes in artistic style—how Friedlander honed techniques over the years. He often photographs his shadow falling in front of his lens, consistently finding ways to situate it in wry and dynamic interplay with other elements in the frame or against a rough landscape, such as a desert floor, which gives it texture and depth. Photographing his reflection in mirrors or windows, he makes his own visage one small part of a complex arrangement of overlapping reflections, surfaces, and lines.