Lee Friedlander - Cray At Chippewa Falls (THE BOOK) - 1987

"ONE OF THE MOST COVETABLE AND INSTRUCTIVE OF COMPANY PHOTOBOOKS"
- Gerry Bager -
("The Photobook: A History. Volume II", Martin Parr, Gerry Badger, page 199)

ONE OF LEE FRIEDLANDER'S RAREST BOOKS.

WONDERFUL FACTORY PHOTOBOOK by famous American photographer Lee Friedlander.

Lee Friedlander visited the company's locations in Wisconsin and Minnesota and created a personal vision of Cray Research through his photography. This, Lee Friedlander's eighth book, was commissioned by John Rollwagen, the president of Cray Research Inc., in commemoration of the company's 15th anniversary. The book was given to employees as a gift and never commercially sold.

One of Lee Friedlander's most successful books in a long and illustrious photobook career is Factory Valleys
(1982), where he combined urban landscapes from the United States' industrial heartland in Ohio with some of the finest portraits of factory workers since those of Lewis W Hine (see Volume I, page 126 and Volume |I, page 185). Some five years later he was invited by the president of Cray Research, John A Rollwagen to make a book along similar lines to celebrate the company's fifteenth anniversary.

"Cray was one of the most successful hi-tech companies of the 1980s boom and Friedlander was back in the territory with which he is most familiar: the white-collar suburbs. Although Factory Valleys described an essentially blue-collar world, Cray at Chippewa Falls is a similar mixture of urban landscapes and employee portraits. One might say that the landscapes are in familiar mode, but it is a mode that was virtually invented by Friedlander. It is always good to revisit the source and appreciate his skill - one of the signs of his mastery being the fact that he can work within his general style while rarely repeating himself or taking an easy option.
Friedlander made some frightening portraits of workers in Factory Valleys, images in which each individual seemed welded to his or her machine. In Cray at Chippewa Falls, given the nature of the commission, the employees' portraits are a little less demonic. Never-theless, they are a study in awesome concentration as their subjects face their computer screens. When at his best, no one photographs better or more naturally than Friedlander. In Cray at Chippewa Falls, he is so close to his best that this has become one of the most covetable and instructive of company photobooks."
(Gerry Badger in "The Photobook: A History. Volume II", Martin Parr, Gerry Badger, page 199 )

Welcome to the second "Factory Photobooks Auction" by Anatole Desachy (France) and Ecki Heuser (Germany).
Dive into the wonderful world of ‘Factory Photobooks’, an amazing genre for photobook collecting.
Discover the unknown work of renowned photographers and enjoy the unique, creative interaction of photography, typography, layout, design and material.

"November 11, 1986. Dear Lee,
I have had the work up of your book now for several days, and I have
looked at it many times. It's superb—a great success!
The images are great, and the quality of the finished prints indicate that the book itself will be gorgeous when it's done. It will be altogether a very fitting celebration of our 15th birthday.
When I first looked at the work, I must say that I was startled. I'm
not used to a work of art being so familiar. The pictures are clearly pure "Friedlander"; but the subjects, Chippewa Falls and Cray, come bursting through. But familiar as they are, you showed me some new things about Cray and the people who work here that I hadn't seen before.
First of all, they really concentrate, don't they! Frankly, I'm more used
to seeing the "laughing in the halls. But then we do take our work seriously, and it isn't all that easy to build these incredible machines.
The picture of Seymour is particularly striking. The connection between his mind and that hand is almost palpable. Seymour may work alone for the most part-but he keeps a lot of other talented people busy too.
Finally the last quote in the book is priceless. I couldn't say it
better my own self, even in I knew how to do that."
- John A. Rollwagen -

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A Cray Research, Inc. Book Minneapolis, Minnesota. 1987. First edition, first printing.

Hardback with full orange cloth and label mounted on (bound in the publisher's original cloth covered boards, paper label on front cover stamped in black; as issued). 310 x 298 mm. 86 pages. 78 photos in black and white. Photos: Lee Friedlander. Reproduction of letter from John A Rollwagen. Afterword: Stuart Klipper. Text in English.

Condition:
Inside fresh and clean with no marks and with no foxing; slightest trace of use, no remarkable defects. Outside very fresh; tiny bumps to the corners (with no consequence for inside). Overall fine condition.

Lee Friedlander is famous for so many fantastic photobooks, starting with "Self Portraits" (1970, Andrew Roth, The Book of 101 Books, page 198/199; Martin Parr, The Photobook, vol 1, page 258; The Open Book, Hasselblad Center, page 262/263; 802 photo books of the M. + M. Auer collection, page 514), following books like "The American Monument" (Andrew Roth, The Book of 101 Books, page 236/237. Martin Parr & Gerry Badger, The Photobook, vol 2, page 28. The Open Book, Hasselblad Center, page 310. 802 photo books of the M. + M. Auer collection, page 600).

'Lee Friedlander, born 1934, is an American photographer and artist. In the 1960s and 1970s, Friedlander evolved an influential and often imitated visual language of urban 'social landscape', with many of his photographs including fragments of store-front reflections, structures framed by fences, posters and street signs. His work is characterized by its innovative use of framing and reflection, often using the natural environment or architectural elements to frame his subjects. Over the course of his career, Friedlander has been the recipient of numerous awards and his work has been exhibited in major museums and galleries worldwide (Museum of Modern Art, New York. Corcoran Gallery of Art. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne).'
(Wikipedia)