At Work

Lee Friedlander — one of the premier U.S. photographers of the 20th century — takes a different angle to explore the American landscape. His black-and-white photographs examine the place where most Americans spend the better part of their lives — "At Work."

His introspective look at the workplace spans 16 years and several regions of the United States — from stock traders in New York City to factory workers in the industrial Midwest and telemarketing firms in Nebraska.

In this collection of commissioned work, Mr. Friedlander concentrates on the routine of 9-to-5 reality. And it is the ordinary — the everyday images that are at once mundane and entirely unexpected — that causes us to rethink our reliance on routine.

Mr. Friedlander's images are haunting in several ways. They replicate identical spaces — and people with similar stares of disillusionment. The message is plain: In the sterility of office spaces, the disengagement from the world takes place each day.

About Lee Friedlander

Born in 1934 in Aberdeen, Washington, Lee Friedlander came to photography at an early age.

During the 1950s, Mr. Friedlander earned his living as a freelance photographer, photographing the jazz scene in New York and New Orleans. He also taught at UCLA, the University of Minnesota and Rice University.

During the 1960s, Mr. Friedlander made a name for himself by photographing the "social landscape" of America.

Inspired by Eugene Atget, Walker Evans, Diane Arbus, Gary Winogrand and Robert Frank, his artistic style created a new strand of documentary photography.

Mr. Friedlander's work has been displayed in a multitude of galleries around the world — and he has published dozens of photographic books.

He has collected numerous prestigious awards over the years, including three Guggenheim fellowships, a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts and a MacArthur Foundation Award. The Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, New York, held a retrospective of his work in 1978.