Aperture Releases Lee Friedlander: Life Still

New York, April 2, 2026—Aperture announces Lee Friedlander: Life Still, a fresh, retrospective monograph to be released on April 28. The publication marks the first collaboration between Aperture, established in 1952 as a nonprofit publisher dedicated to creating conversations around photography, and Lee Friedlander, whose work from the 1950s through today is widely celebrated for its wit, complexity, and attunement to the quiet surrealism of the everyday.

Lee Friedlander: Life Still is a timeless examination of the idiosyncrasies of American life. With more than half of the photographs having never previously been published, the book collects work from across the nearly seventy years that Friedlander has been making photographs, juxtaposing images from different eras to create a visual dialogue between the past and present. Friedlander’s signature observations of the built and natural environment we inhabit never tire, and his dynamic compositions remain both humorous and poignant.

The monograph includes an essay by Hua Hsu, the Pulitzer Prize–winning critic and The New Yorker staff writer, who shares, “Few people have taught us to see America quite like the photographer Lee Friedlander.” He writes that Friedlander’s careful pairings of pictures illuminate “rhymes across time and space” and observes how these stubborn paradoxes of the American consciousness—the irony, humor, and self-conflict—remain as vivid today as they always have been.

This book was made possible with generous support from David Dechman, Michel Mercure, and Jeffrey Fraenkel. Lee Friedlander: Life Still is published by Aperture and available at aperture.org/books.

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Lee Friedlander (born in Aberdeen, Washington, 1934) is a photographer celebrated for his keen ability to capture the intersections of public and private spaces, as well as the complexities of American life. Friedlander’s work has been widely exhibited, including retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. His photographs are included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and Tate, London, among others. Friedlander is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. His numerous monographs include Self-Portrait (1970), The American Monument (1976), and Sticks & Stones (2004). His work has been published in Aperture, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and Time.

Hua Hsu is a staff writer at The New Yorker, professor of literature at Bard College, and author of A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific (2016) and Stay True: A Memoir (2022), which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2023.

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About Aperture
Aperture is a nonprofit publisher that leads conversations around photography worldwide. From its base in New York, Aperture connects global audiences and supports artists through its acclaimed quarterly magazine, books, exhibitions, digital platforms, public programs, limited-edition prints, and awards. Established in 1952 to advance “creative thinking, significantly expressed in words and photographs,” Aperture champions photography’s vital role in nurturing curiosity and encouraging a more just, tolerant society.

Aperture’s programs and operations are made possible by the generosity of our board of trustees, our members, and other individuals, and with major support from Bobby Campbell Charitable Fund, Coach, David Dechman and Michel Mercure, Susan and Thomas Dunn, FotoFocus, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Celso M. Gonzalez-Falla, William Talbot Hillman Foundation, Joy of Giving Something, Anne Levy Charitable Trust, Mailman Foundation, Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, James McKinney, Richard and Ronay Menschel, Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, Robert Motherwell and Renate Ponsold, Neuberger Berman, New York City Council, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, Ms. Eliot Nolen of the Mary P. Oenslager Foundation Fund, Yesim and Dusty Philip, Theodore and Mary Jo Shen, Diane Sherman, Michael W. Sonnenfeldt/MUUS Collection, Jon Stryker and Slobodan Randjelović, Jane Smith Turner Foundation, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and Wyeth Foundation for American Art.

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Press Contacts:
Lauren Van Natten, Aperture, publicity@aperture.org

Kate Greenberg, Arply, kate@arply.co