ANTHONY FRIEDKIN

Born in 1949, Los Angeles, USA

 

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Anthony Friedkin is an internationally recognized fine art photographer. A native of Los Angeles, Anthony Friedkin began photographing as a child. He started working in the darkroom at age eleven, processing and printing his own images. Since that time, which was in the early 1960’s, he has accomplished a significant body of work. His photographs are included in major Museum collections, such as the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, or the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. His pictures have been published in Japan, Russia, Europe, and many Fine Art magazines in America.

For the past twenty-five years Anthony Friedkin has lived and worked out of his apartment studio in Santa Monica. He is also preparing a book of his Ocean-Wave photographs. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honours, most notably the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Eastman Kodak Company Special Endorsement. Anthony Friedkin is a native of Los Angeles, California and has worked extensively in Western and Eastern Europe, Japan, Mexico, and New York City.

 

ABOUT HIS WORK

 Friedkin uses his camera as a means of personal discovery. His full frame black & white photographs explore the many mysteries of moments in time. He creates his own distinctive exhibition prints in his darkroom. He says of his work, “I believe in extraordinary photographs that draw you in and cannot be easily defined-celebrating perception and its many hidden layers of reality”

Together his completed photo essays are: The Gay Essay, done in San Francisco and Los Angeles in 1969 and 1970; The Beverly Hills Essay, shot in 1975; The Hollywood Series, which was inaugurated by a special commission in 1978 and continues to this day; and The Ocean-Surfing Essay, which explores Friedkin’s intimate, intensely personal relationship with the sea and it's magnificent waves. A historical set of photographs on New York City Brothels, includes genuine studies of prostitutes in their work environment. A special set of pictures on California Prisons and their inmates, includes sensitive portraits of incarcerated teenagers. For most of his life he has been photographing Los Angeles, creating an unparalleled body of images, which comes from his love of the diversely visual and cultural town.

Informed by the works of Atget, Kertesz, and Josef Koudelka, he moves gracefully among disparate worlds--from surrealistic sets of Hollywood to the shores of the tempestuous Pacific Ocean. Julian Cox, from the Department of Photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum, writing in the introduction of Friedkin’s photographic Art book Timekeeper, said, “He captures and creates beauty for its own sake, but he also chases life's more elusive mysteries, The best of his pictures are edgy fragments of life, emitting sparks of electricity that increase in wattage the more closely we examine what's there.”

The Le Mer Series constitutes his most significant body of work including: The Gay Essay, The Beverly Hills Essay, the Hollywood Essay, and New York Brothels.

 

AWARDS & GRANDS

J. Paul Getty Museum,Selected Photograph to be used in the "Courbet and the Modern Landscape Exhibit", Los Angeles, CA, 2006
The Santa Monica Cultural Affairs Department, selected by commission to produce a Fine Art Set of Photographs for the Twenty-02 Publication and Arts Project, 2002
J. Paul Getty Museum, Guest Lecturer on the Artist Brassai, Getty galleries, Los Angeles, CA, 1999
Central Los Angeles Public Library - first photographer commissioned to inaugurate program to create a Fine Art Set of photographs on Los Angeles, 1996
Proclomations From the City of Los Angeles, stating my contribution to Fine Art Photography Signed by Mayor Tom Bradley, 1980
National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship Grant in Photography, "The Beverly Hills essay", 1977
New American Imagery, One of five photographers chosen for special issue of Swiss Camera Magazine, Switzerland, 1974
The Eastman Kodak Company-Special endorsement: Poster using my photograph from the "Picture Hollywood" exhibit to endorse Kodak ELITE Fine Art Paper, 1974

COLLECTIONS

J.Paul Getty Museum, Photography Department, Los Angeles, CA
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Photographic collection, Los Angeles, CA
Laguna Art Museum, Laguna beach, CA
Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA
Museum of photographic Arts, San Diego, CA
Los Angeles Central Libraries Special, CA
Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, CA
Seagram Collection, New York, NY
Grunwald Collection at the University of California, Los Angeles, CA
Wells Fargo Bank Collection
Graham Nash Collection
Al Dorskind Trust
Edward James Olmos Collection
Robert Maguire Collection~Museum of Modern Art, Tel Aviv, Israel
The George Eastman Collection, RI
Cornell University, The Herbert F. Johnson Museum
UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA
City of Santa Monica's Art Collection, SM, CA
Law Firm of Edward Woods & Assoc. Beverly Hills, CA
Law Firm of Nossaman, Gunther, Know & Elliot LLP, Los Angeles, CA