Lee Friedlander's Seven-Decade Portraits of Wife Maria on View at Fraenkel Gallery
At the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco, a collection of Lee Friedlander's portraits featuring his wife Maria is currently on display, celebrating nearly seventy years of their union. The couple first crossed paths in 1958 while Maria worked as an assistant at Sports Illustrated. The black-and-white images showcase Maria in diverse locations, such as Paris and Santa Fe, while also portraying their family moments. One notable photograph from 1974 captures Maria looking at Lee from inside a camper. Subsequent images convey themes of aging and closeness. Maria described the photographs as akin to "rereading a private journal." The exhibit concludes with a shadow image of the couple. In a 2019 interview, Maria spoke about her deteriorating eyesight.
Key facts
- Lee Friedlander's portraits of his wife Maria are on view at Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco
- The couple met in 1958 at the Sports Illustrated offices, where Maria worked as an assistant and women were not allowed to write
- Their first date was a Count Basie show at the jazz club Birdland, after Lee called Maria
- They have been married sixty-eight years
- Maria told gallerist Jeffrey Fraenkel in 2019 that the relationship "never stopped"
- A 1974 photograph was taken on a camping trip in Colorado
- Lee's 1979 photographs of a then-unknown Madonna later helped put the couple's children through college
- Lee made his first portrait of Maria with Walker Evans's camera
- Maria compared looking back at Lee's pictures to "rereading a private journal"
- In 2019 Maria said failing eyesight had robbed her of "one of the greatest pleasures of my life"
- Lee said "The darkroom has become his cupola"
Entities
Artists
- Lee Friedlander
- Maria Friedlander
- Jeffrey Fraenkel
- Count Basie
- Madonna
- Garry Winogrand
- Walker Evans
Institutions
- Fraenkel Gallery
- Sports Illustrated
- Birdland
- Luhring Augustine
- Aperture
Locations
- San Francisco
- United States
- New City
- New York
- Colorado
- Las Vegas
- Paris
- France
- Santa Fe
- Wales
- United Kingdom