Passing By

At first glance, almost nothing seems to happen.

Six people stand outside a photography studio in Newark, New Jersey, in 1962. No one looks toward the camera. Everyone is watching something beyond the edge of the frame.

Yet the longer we stay with Lee Friedlander's photograph, the richer it becomes. Repeated gestures, shared gazes, architecture and small visual echoes quietly connect the scene, revealing relationships that are easy to miss at first glance.

In this episode, we explore how Friedlander discovered meaning not by isolating individual subjects, but by noticing how ordinary elements briefly come together. Walking invites us to cultivate that same attention, revealing moments that often disappear before we even realize they were there

À première vue, il ne semble presque rien se passer.

Six personnes se tiennent devant un studio de photographie à Newark, au New Jersey, en 1962. Personne ne regarde vers l'appareil. Tous observent quelque chose qui se trouve hors champ.

Mais plus on demeure devant cette photographie de Lee Friedlander, plus elle révèle sa richesse. Des gestes qui se répondent, des regards, l'architecture et de subtils échos visuels relient discrètement les différents éléments de la scène.

Dans cet épisode, nous découvrons comment Friedlander s'intéressait moins aux sujets eux-mêmes qu'aux relations passagères qui les unissent. Une invitation à marcher plus lentement et à porter attention à ces instants ordinaires qui disparaissent souvent avant même que nous les remarquions.

Related images and references:
photographyandwalking.com

—
Music: “Beat ’em with Rhythm” by Victor Natas, edited for this podcast (CC BY 4.0, Freesound.org).

Produced by Productions 3655 Inc.   

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you'd like to look at today's photograph while listening, you'll find it on the Photography in Walking website under episode 22. But if you're out walking or simply listening, don't worry, we'll discover it together. Hello, I'm Philippe. If you've ever stopped walking because something completely ordinary suddenly seemed to fall into place, today's photograph may feel familiar. So the first time I spent time with this photograph, I wasn't immediately sure why it held my attention. At first glance, almost nothing seems to happen. Six people are standing on a sidewalk. No one appears to be speaking, no one is looking toward the camera, they are all facing something happening just beyond the edge of the frame. Something Lee Friedlander chose not to show us. Naturally, I found myself wondering what had caught their attention. But after a while, I realized that question mattered less and less. Another one quietly took its place. What was happening between the people themselves? But before trying to answer that question, let's simply spend a moment with the photo. Your eye will probably wander before settling anywhere. Mine certainly did. It first rested on an older man standing at the far left, his arms folded tightly across his chest. Then it drifted toward the doorway, where two young black women stand side by side. One wears glasses and a checked dress. The other stands slightly taller, one knee relaxed, one hand raised gently toward her face. To their right stands another white man also with folded arms, one leg bent almost casually. Behind him, almost absorbed by the darkness of the doorway, another older figure slowly begins to emerge. Nothing dramatic seems to be taking place. In fact, that's part of what makes the photograph so easy to walk past. Yet the longer I stayed with it, the less accidental these six people began to feel. Little visual echoes started appearing. The folded arms of the two white men quietly answer one another across the picture. The relaxed bend of one knee unexpectedly reappears elsewhere. The doorway gathers everyone together without ever turning them into a crowd. Even their gazes seem connected, each directed towards something that will remain forever outside the photograph. I don't know whether Friedlander noticed all of these relationships at once. I suspect he discovered them the way many of us discover things while walking, one small observation leading almost unnoticed to the next. Perhaps these alignments lasted only a second, long enough for someone walking down the sidewalk to notice them, long enough for one photograph. The photo was taken in Newark, New Jersey in nineteen six two. Lee Friedlander was only twenty eight years old. Looking at it today, I find it almost impossible not to be aware of when and where it was taken. The Civil Rights Movement was already reshaping American society, although the Civil Rights Act was still two years away, and public space itself was being transformed in countless visible and invisible ways. And yet, Friedlander refuses to tell us what this photograph means. He never identifies these people, he never explains whether they know one another, he doesn't reveal what has drawn their attention beyond the frame. He simply records a moment in which black and white Americans occupy the same narrow stretch of sidewalk, each absorbed by something we ourselves will never see. So history is certainly present, but it arrives quietly. And there is something else I completely overlooked the first times I looked at this photograph. Above the group a large sign reads simply photos. Once you notice it, it's almost impossible not to see it. The letters dominate the upper part of the frame, while an arrow points toward the doorway below. Inside the shop window hang small portrait photographs, probably passport or identification pictures arranged neatly behind the people standing outside. Here, suddenly, the photograph seems to fold in on itself. Photography appears inside photography. Living faces stand beneath photographed faces, and Friedlander photographs them all together. Nothing about this feels clever for the sake of being clever. In fact, I suspect that's why it stays with me. He never draws attention to the idea. He simply notices that, for one brief moment, a photography studio, its display window, its customers, or perhaps simply passers by, and his own camera all briefly occupy the same visual space. Walking makes discoveries like that possible, and I often think that's one of Friedlander's greatest strengths. He rarely seems interested in isolating a single subject. Instead, he notices relationships that exist only because unrelated things have briefly come together a doorway, a sign, two folded arms, two women standing quietly together, small portraits hanging beside glass. None of these elements say very much on its own. Together they begin speaking to one another. That's a very different way of looking at a city. Most of us move through urban spaces by identifying things a shop, a bus stop, a doorway, a person waiting. Friedlander seems to look for relationships instead. I find myself thinking that walking encourages exactly that kind of attention. A person traveling by car would almost certainly miss these quiet alignments. Someone hurrying to an appointment might never notice that repeated gestures, lettering, architecture, and waiting figures have come together into a remarkably balanced composition. If you've listened to the earlier episode on a William Klein photograph, you may remember another gathering on a city sidewalk. At first, it could be tempting to think of the two photographers as similar. Clearly, both worked in the street and welcomed complexity, and neither tried to simplify urban life. But spending just a little time with their photographs immediately shows very different temperaments. Klein's streets often surge with movement, confrontation, and energy. His camera seems willing, even eager, to embrace collision. Friedlander's streets are no less alive, they're simply quieter. Walking isn't simply a way of getting from one place to another. Each step quietly rearranges the world. People shift in relation to windows, reflections align with passing faces. Signs suddenly complete a composition. Shadows connect strangers who have never met. Often most of these arrangements disappear before we're even aware they existed. But Friedlander seems unusually sensitive to those brief moments when unrelated things suddenly belong together. Years after this photograph was taken, Peter Galassi, who organized the Museum of Modern Arts Major Retrospective of Lee Friedlander, described photographs like these less as isolated subjects than as sophisticated visual constructions. And I find that observation especially helpful here. Nothing dominates the picture. The people matter, the doorway matters, the sign matters, even the small portrait photographs hanging behind the shop window matter. Remove almost any one of those elements, and the quiet balance of the picture begins to change. That way of seeing also helps explain why Friedlander's photographs continue to feel so contemporary. The pictures allow our eyes to wander, but rarely tell us where to look. We don't simply see the photograph, we gradually discover it. And perhaps that's why I keep returning to this Newark sidewalk. I still find myself thinking about those two young black women standing near the center of the frame. Friedlander never isolates them or asks us to read them symbolically. Yet it's impossible for me to forget that this photograph was made in Newark in 1962. So history remains quietly present without ever becoming the subject. The sidewalk becomes one of those ordinary public places where social realities simply exist before anyone begins interpreting them. Okay, this is personal, but the older I get, the more I appreciate photographers who trust their viewers. Friedlander never rushes us toward a conclusion. Rather he invites us to spend time with what we're seeing before deciding what we think. Perhaps that is where walking enters the photograph once more. When we walk, we never receive a city all at once. It unfolds gradually, corner after corner, storefront after storefront, stranger after stranger. Most of those relationships disappear almost immediately. Occasionally someone notices, and every once in a while, someone also happens to be carrying a camera. Maybe that's what this photograph has been showing us all along. Not simply six people waiting on a sidewalk, not simply a photography shop in Newark, or even a particular afternoon in nineteen sixty two. It shows us a way of paying attention. A way of moving through the world, slowly enough, that ordinary things begin speaking to one another before quietly returning to themselves. The next time you're walking, whether you have a camera or not, I hope you'll discover that these moments happen more often than we usually imagine, even if most of them disappear before we notice them. But Leifried Lander happened to notice one, and more than sixty years later, we're still standing on that sidewalk with him. Thank you for walking with me today. See you next time.