In the 1960s, a new generation of American photographers looked unsentimentally at the world around them. Their style—examinations of people as well as their environments and social conditions—was sometimes called “social landscape,” a phrase coined by Friedlander. Through images of everyday scenes, he and contemporaries like Diane Arbus, Bruce Davidson, Danny Lyon, and Garry Winogrand highlighted the often absurd, banal, or incongruous aspects of postwar America.

Friedlander specialized in depicting the prismatic surroundings of urban life, finding reflections and refractions in windows, mirrors, picture frames, television screens, and even highly polished chrome. As people walk through the busy building entryway of New York City, the panes of glass capture trees, cars, stores, and pedestrians, muddying our ability to understand the space or discern between the real and the reflected.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)