JTF (just the facts): A total of 28 black-and-white photographs, framed in black/white and matted, and hung against white walls in the main gallery space. (Installation shots below.)

The following works are included in the show:

• 1 gelatin silver print, 1962/1970s, sized roughly 8×11 inches
• 23 gelatin silver prints, 1958/2013, 1961/2013, 1963/2012, 1963/2013, 1964/2012, 1965/2014, 1965/2025, 1966/2005, 1966/2014, 1966/2017, 1969/2014, 1970/2012, 1971/2014, 1986/2015, 2006/2008, 2012/2016, 2012/2022, 2013/2016, 2015/2016, sized roughly 9×13 or 13×9 inches
• 2 gelatin silver prints, 1997/2009, 2003/2009, sized roughly 15×15 inches
• 2 gelatin silver prints, 1971/2020, 2013/2021, sized roughly 13×18 or 18×13 inches

A monograph of this body of work has recently been published by Eakins Press (here). Clothbound hardcover with tipped in images on the front and back covers, 11.75×12.5 inches, 112 pages, with 106 tritone reproductions. Includes an afterword by Peter Kayafas.

Comments/Context: The instinct to make photographs around Christmas time, documenting family gatherings, special meals, Christmas trees, religious rituals, stockings hung fireside, children opening presents, and other holiday moments reaches back to the very earliest days in the history of photography – when cameras became broadly available, they quickly cemented their valuable place at Christmas and other holidays. Paging through vernacular Christmas pictures in old family albums offers a nostalgic trip back through different styles of tree decorations, fancy clothes, coveted gifts, and family lore, providing the visual glue of recurring ritual and memory that helps tie the past to the present.

But these essentially private photographs only tell part of the collective Christmas story; there is another more public Christmas that takes place all around towns and cities, particularly in America, where churches, streets, shop windows, homes, and businesses are all garlanded with lights and festive decor. This is of course where the original religious significance of Christmas has been expanded and transformed into a big time commercial extravaganza, with nearly every business and downtown shopping district perked up with holiday cheer to encourage generous buying and consumption. And for street photographers on the lookout for wry photographic serendipity, these Christmas themed visuals, thickly woven into the everyday fabric of life across the country, provide plenty of possibilities for clever photographic experimentation.

Lee Friedlander has been making Christmas photographs on and off for something like seven decades now, which feels unexpectedly consistent, even in his wildly prolific and varied photographic career. Building on the Christmas theme in his work, as seen in a 2011 gallery show (reviewed here), this show accompanies a more systematic deep dive photobook study of Friedlander’s Christmas motifs, recently published by Eakins Press. In just under thirty pictures (drawn from a publication featuring more than one hundred), this exhibit bounces from the 1950s to the 2010s, and from Honolulu and Hollywood to West Texas and New York City, capturing the American Christmas spirit as only Friedlander can. In many ways, these photographs aren’t inherently Christmas pictures at all – they are simply images that use available Christmas motifs discovered out in the world to activate Friedlander’s ingenious eye for composition, with the clever placement or juxtaposition of a Santa Claus figure or a Christmas tree offering seemingly endless opportunities for subtle visual comedy and irony.

Storefront reflections and shop window setups have often featured in Friedlander’s compositions, with layering, overlapping, nested framing, and flattening of distances just a few of the visual tools he has employed over the years. The most straightforward of Friedlander’s Christmas storefront observations here document the behind-the-scenes work of women arranging a tree in a window display and the unboxing of a fancy tree on the sidewalk. But more often, the decoration is already done, and Friedlander has simply noticed the unexpected oddity of an airplane flying through a wreath, a wiry tree placed as part of a bikini sale, a Santa face added to a barbershop display, and a Southern fried chicken dinner advertisement adorned with a wreath. Then he steps back a few paces and lets the glass of the windows do its magic, creating a complex arrangement of a man’s head obscured by a Santa face and a set of forlorn hanging balls multiplied by angled shadows and reflected building facades. Friedlander similarly lingers over the quiet desperation of the holiday season, combining reflections of a nearby Santa and a decorated tree with the scrawled letters of HELP on a dirty window.

When Friedlander looks down streets and sidewalks, the potential for visual stacking increases substantially. With the Christmas theme in mind, he notices the way tree decorations, draped bunting, and even a bell intermingle with a phone booth, various street signs, interrupting light and electrical poles, and nearby buildings; Santa gets in on the this kind of urban action as well, waving from a grocery store window amid a chaotic whirlwind of road and commercial signage. Indeed, it seems commerce is never far from anyone’s mind, as seen in an image of a dense arrangement of wreaths on offer and a lineup of available Santa figurines set atop a parked car. Further afield, Friedlander spies the buy-it-now Christmas spirit in a roadside Merry Xmas greeting mixed in with the prices of six packs of beer and soda.

While we might expect Jesus to play a more prominent role in the visual celebration of Christmas, he really only appears twice in this show – once literally overshadowed by Friedlander himself (in the form of the photographer’s shadow cast across a plastic creche scene), and later indirectly via the happy front yard exhortation that JESUS LOVES YA atop a busy set of decorations dominated by the hovering face of Santa Claus. Yes, it is Santa that steals the show most often, and Friedlander finds him in plenty of unexpected locations and situations, including packed up in a wooden box, deflated on the sidewalk like a dead body, waving from a cactus filled desert (as seen through a car window), and standing on the roof of Bob’s Trailer Supply wearing a grin with a hint of creepy menace.

What I like best about Friedlander’s Christmas photographs is the way they so smartly mix high and low, combining sneakily sophisticated compositional strategies with a splash of holiday irreverence, making pictures that are at once serious art and playful and impertinent cultural commentary. It’s not like Friedlander has ever really needed an impetus to make photographs, but the pull of Christmas seems to have consistently offered him visual contradictions worth unpacking. Perhaps the most important gift he gives us with these images is his warmly dry wit, incisively reminding us to step back and observe the quiet absurdity of the whole holiday production.

Collector’s POV: The prints in this show are priced at $9500 or $12500, based on size, with the one earlier near vintage print priced at $14000. Friedlander’s work is routinely available in the secondary markets, with recent prices at auction ranging from roughly $2000 on the low end to as much as $80000 for his most iconic vintage prints. In 2015, a selection of Friedlander’s little screens (38 prints in all) sold for $850000.