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Media history
Sublime Rhizome: Lee Friedlander’s Landscape Photography
Lars Nowak
From the Journal: Rundbrief Fotografie
Published online:
6. June 2026
Abstract
The American photographer Lee Friedlander (*1934) rose to fame in the 1960s primarily on account of his innovative and complex cityscapes. In the decade that followed, he began applying the formal strategies that he had developed in an urban context to rural regions of the USA and adapting them to the conditions prevailing there. This gave rise to landscapes whose rhizomatic design aimed at a new kind of sublimity combining the maximalist with the minimalist principle on the level of both space and energy. These not only set Friedlander apart from earlier exponents of American landscape photography, but, in a crucial respect, they also took him beyond the philosophical determinants of the sublime.
The American photographer Lee Friedlander (*1934) rose to fame in the 1960s primarily on account of his innovative and complex cityscapes. In the decade that followed, he began applying the formal strategies that he had developed in an urban context to rural regions of the USA and adapting them to the conditions prevailing there. This gave rise to landscapes whose rhizomatic design aimed at a new kind of sublimity combining the maximalist with the minimalist principle on the level of both space and energy. These not only set Friedlander apart from earlier exponents of American landscape photography, but, in a crucial respect, they also took him beyond the philosophical determinants of the sublime.
Other articles in this issue:
Rundbrief Fotografie Issues
Volume 33 (2026)
Volume 32 (2025)
Volume 31 (2024)
Volume 30 (2023)
Volume 29 (2022)
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