Lee Friedlander: Pickup

An homage to the pickup truck as a quintessentially American mode of transportation

In this compendium, Lee Friedlander (born 1934) examines the ordinary pickup truck, a quintessentially American mode of transportation. Unadorned in form as well as function, pickups have long been the vehicle of choice for farmers and tradespeople. Their well-worn beds--usually open to the elements, laid bare for all to see--have held and hauled all manner of things, from spare tires and jumbles of wires to animals and the occasional person.

Friedlander, in his witty and encompassing, clear-eyed idiom, has observed this most utilitarian and unapologetically personal object in its native setting: the cacophonous bricolage that is the American social landscape.