Curated by Peter Galassi

It’s fitting, if inevitable, that a Lee Friedlander retrospective should originate at the Museum of Modern Art, an institution that championed his work early on (John Szarkowski put him in the historic 1967 “New Documents” show with Diane Arbus and Garry Winogrand) and has collected it in depth ever since. With some five hundred prints drawn from throughout Friedlander’s insanely prolific fifty-year career, the show is likely to be as unruly and unconventional as the work, which includes genre-busting portraiture, self-portraiture, landscapes, still lifes, and architectural studies, virtually all in black-and-white. This maverick traditionalist has quietly and relentlessly redefined the medium. At MoMA, he’s bound to make some noise.

Travels to the Haus der Kunst, Munich, Nov. 12, 2005–Feb. 12, 2006.

— Vince Aletti