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.