SEEING DOUBLE: THE SUBJECT OF VISION IN LEE FRIEDLANDER’S SELF-PORTRAITURE

Abstract

American photographer Lee Friedlander’s photographs are often deemed to be unreadable. This critical assessment of his work is principally based on his manipulation of reflection, framing, and superimposition. This essay takes these manipulations as its subject. I suggest one method of reading the unreadable, focusing particularly on two self-portraits: Tallahassee, Florida 1969 and Madison, Wisconsin 1966. My approach weaves together the ideas of Jacques Lacan and Homi Bhabha. In the first section, I place Lacan’s concept of the stain into dialogue with the recurring appearance of Friedlander’s own shadow in his self-portraiture. In the second, I bring Bhabha into conversation with Lacan, showing crossovers in how they conceptualise reflections. I argue that Tallahassee and Madison visually articulate these crossovers. In the third, I use Bhabha’s concept of doubling to approach the two photographs’ delineation of the Lacanian gaze. In forging links between Friedlander, Lacan, and Bhabha, I propose two complementary ideas. The first is that Friedlander’s photographs help to illustrate commonality between Lacan’s and Bhabha’s work. The second is that Lacan and Bhabha help us read Friedlander’s often perplexing self-portraits. By expressing an absence of the self, these photographs comment on the impossibility of self-portraiture.