Apples and Olives

The master photographer best known for his extensive, insightful documentation of "the American social landscape"--from jazz musicians to factory hands to New York pedestrians and office workers zoning out at their keyboards--has recently been spending more time looking at the literal, natural landscape. His monumental 2005 MoMA retrospective showed, for the first time, a new series of landscapes made in the American West, while for Olives and Apples, he has looked back over the last decade's work and culled a forest, tree by tree. His docile subjects, apple trees photographed in New York State and olive trees photographed in France, Italy and Spain from 1997-2004, are presented in circumstances ranging from sunny, leafy summer health to glittering winter ice-storm glory. Some of the most striking compositions are shot from just inside the reach of a tree's furthest twigs, so that expanding branching limbs fill the frame, stretching out around the viewer.Friedlander Lee is the author of 'Apples and Olives ', published 2005 under ISBN 9781933045320 and ISBN 1933045329.