Lee Friedlander Portraits

Friedlander's portraits of subjects framed in everyday settings are jolting. At first glance, they look like ordinary snapshots from a family album. But look again, and you discover all sorts of incongruities, ironic echoes, lots of small insights that add up to a shock. Some well-known figures crop upCount Basie, Jean Genet, Walker Percy, Diane Arbus, Walker Evansbut most of the subjects are unknown people whom the viewer comes to know intimately. Painter R. B. Kitaj, in his foreword, compares these quietly devastating photos to the paintings of Pierre Bonnard: both Bonnard and Friedlander are deeply domestic, and both picture scenes that are a ""cross between penny-plain and complexly interesting.'' A wry, wistful cross-section of American life by a photographer with no preconceptions unfolds in these 73 duotones. October 23