Joel Coen, the cult filmmaker who made "The Big Lebowski" and "No Country for Old Men", nurtures a love of photography, leading him to dedicate a show to star photographer Lee Friedlander at an international photo festival in southern France.
Coen has created a show featuring 70 of the US photographer's images to tell the story of his unusual career as a chronicler of everyday life, from his humorous and poignant images of city life to rich rural landscapes.
Coen said in the coastal city of Arles that he knows Lee and greatly appreciates his work. "As a filmmaker, I liked the idea of emphasizing his unusual approach to framing, his disruption and reassembly of elements into new and impossible compositions," he said.
"Lee Friedlander framed by Joel Coen" mostly features street scenes and illustrates both artists' fascination with fragmented frames and mirror effects and unveils an unlikely kinship between the two artists.
The show is a highlight at this year's "Les Rencontres d'Arles," an internationally renowned photography festival that is one of the most important worldwide.
Made up of some 40 exhibitions, other shows to look out for include a retrospective of US documentary and portrait photographer Mary Ellen Mark, who died in 2015, and the show "Finir en beauté" (A beautiful ending) by Sophie Calle. The festival in Provence, established in 2020, runs until September 29.
