The American Monument

Lee Friedlander
The American Monument

Photographs: Lee Friedlander

Text: Leslie George Katz

Publisher: Eakins

176 pages

Pictures: 214

Year: 1976

Comments: Original triple screw post bound blue-green hardcover, 305 x 435 mm. First edition, 1976. Text in english. Included in The Photobook by Parr & Badger, vol.2, p.28 ; Photobooks of the Mr & Mrs Auer Collection, p.600 ; The Books of 101 books by Andrew Roth, p.236/237. A nice condition. Collectible.

In an environment dominated by menacing speed, instability, advertising and television, the American monument plays a meditative role. A grace of intention shines through the ofttimes awkward alliance of efforts that produced them. They are redeemed by the confidence they express in the worth of the act memorialized. In this album the viewer and the viewed hold each other in balance. A world buried alive in our midst is unearthed to us. The photographer has brought it to us to see.

All doctrines, all politics and civilization, exurge from you,
All sculpture and monuments, and anything inscribed anywhere, are tallied in you,
The gist of histories and statistics as far back as the records reach, is in you this hour, and myths and tales the same,
If you were not breathing and walking here, where would they all be?
–Walt Whitman