Nudes

"Nudes" gathers eighty-four black-and-white photographs Lee Friedlander made of women, applying his snapshot-derived, deadpan eye to the nude figure the way he had already applied it to American streets and store windows.

Pantheon published the book in 1991 in an oblong hardcover format, with an afterword by Ingrid Sischy. Among the sitters is a young Louise Ciccone, photographed before she became known to the world as Madonna, a detail that has followed the book since its release. The pictures share the plain, unposed directness that runs through Friedlander's work generally, resisting the conventions of studio nude photography in favor of cluttered rooms, awkward angles, and ordinary light.

Friedlander, born in Aberdeen, Washington in 1934, began photographing the American social landscape in 1948 and has spent the decades since turning a dense, information-packed eye on subjects ranging from cars and trees to monuments and nudes.