The Desert Seen

Rating:
Summary: glaring friedlander
Review: After spending the last 15 yrs. looking through Friedlanders photographs, I rate this book equal to "The American Monument", his tour de force. No photographer has ever visualized the desert "forest" as he has. He photographs the harshness of the desert light along with the harshness of its plants with his new format, the ultrawide Hasselblad. The combination of technique and his unique vision make this book groundbreaking for this artist.

Rating:
Summary: glaring friedlander
Review: After spending the last 15 yrs. looking through Friedlanders photographs, I rate this book equal to "The American Monument", his tour de force. No photographer has ever visualized the desert "forest" as he has. He photographs the harshness of the desert light along with the harshness of its plants with his new format, the ultrawide Hasselblad. The combination of technique and his unique vision make this book groundbreaking for this artist.

Rating:
Summary: Friedlander's images leave nothing to chance.
Review: At the end of his book, The Desert Seen, Friedlander quotes from the film, "My Little Chickadee" - "A cowboy sits down to a game of cards with W.C. Fields and says, 'Is this a game of chance?' W.C. Fields responds, "No Sir, not the way I play it."

In his timeless images of the desert seen, Friedlander leaves nothing to chance. To the critic from Berea, Kentucky, look again, and keep looking again and again.

Rating:
Summary: Friedlander's images leave nothing to chance.
Review: At the end of his book, The Desert Seen, Friedlander quotes from the film, "My Little Chickadee" - "A cowboy sits down to a game of cards with W.C. Fields and says, 'Is this a game of chance?' W.C. Fields responds, "No Sir, not the way I play it."

In his timeless images of the desert seen, Friedlander leaves nothing to chance. To the critic from Berea, Kentucky, look again, and keep looking again and again.

Rating:
Summary: One man, two eyes, a camera and cactus
Review: Masterly photography, beautifully produced book and it includes the best essay on what it means to live as a photographer and seeker that I have read. This is deceptive work, the product of a formidable visual intelligence, and it leaves most contemporary 'art' photography eating its Sonora Desert dust. I like this book as an odyssey through a wildly beautiful landscape, with individual photographs pulling me back time and again to ponder another detail. A 'Difficult Love', but definitely a book to live with.