Lee Friedlander: Christmas
Deborah Bell Photographs is pleased to present Lee Friedlander: Christmas, an exhibition that highlights the celebrated photographer’s long-standing exploration of American life through the visual language of the holiday season. Organized in partnership with Fraenkel Gallery (San Francisco) and Luhring Augustine (New York), the show accompanies the release of Friedlander’s newest publication Lee Friedlander: Christmas, issued by the Eakins Press Foundation.
Featuring work made between 1958 and 2015, the exhibition brings together nearly seventy years of images that reveal Friedlander’s unmistakable wit and observational acuity. Photographed in storefronts, suburban interiors, bustling streets, and private gatherings across the country, these scenes turn Christmas into a prism through which to view American culture—its intimacy, contradictions, excesses, and quiet moments alike. Friedlander’s photographs embrace both the tenderness and the oddities of the season, merging humor with a keen grasp of human behavior.
The accompanying book gathers more than one hundred images personally chosen by Friedlander, illustrating his enduring curiosity for the rituals—formal and improvised—that shape daily life. As Peter Kayafas of the Eakins Press Foundation notes, the work probes the significance of Christmas in the United States—whether sacred, commercial, satirical, or celebratory—revealing the holiday as a mirror of the country’s diversity and restless imagination.
About the Author
Lee Friedlander (born 1934, Aberdeen, Washington) emerged as one of the most influential voices in postwar American photography. He began working with a camera in his teenage years and developed a distinctive approach that transformed the commonplace into complex and often surprising visual statements. Known for his sophisticated compositions and his ability to impose structure on seemingly chaotic scenes, Friedlander has produced extensive bodies of work that include urban landscapes, portraits, nudes, nature studies, and a groundbreaking series of self-portraits. His photographs have been exhibited around the world and are held in major institutional collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the National Gallery of Art. Throughout his career, Friedlander has continually reshaped the ways we understand the photographic image and its relationship to contemporary life.
Lee Friedlander: Christmas
December 6, 2025 – January 10, 202
Deborah Bell Photographs, New York, Usa
