Lee Friedlander
[Photographer, b. 1934, Aberdeen, Washington, lives in New York.]

 That little tiny moment [in photography] is a beginning and an end and it has something to do with the same kind of mentality that an athlete has to use… The tricks that good tennis players use, especially what happens when the ball bounces and does odd things… You couldn’t predict what you’re what you’re going to do. Try to hit it back. Not only try to hit it back, try to hit it back in a weird way. Or in some articulate way. And I think photography is stuck with those same kinds of moments, especially if you’re not a studio photographer. You don’t have much control. 
 When I choose the negatives to print, I do it partially by whim: I let my eye do the thinking. There is something elusive out there and what you are doing is trying to get it on film. 
 Photography doesn’t just give you the tree, it gives you every leaf on the tree. 
 The idea that the snapshot would be thought of as a cult or movement is very tiresome to me and, I’m sure, confusing to others. It’s a swell word I've always liked. It probably came about because it describes a basic fact of photography. In a snap, or small portion of time, all that the camera can consume in breadth and bite and light is rendered in astonishing detail: all the leaves on a tree, as well as the tree itself and all its surroundings. 
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