Known for his groundbreaking artistic practice, Barry Frydlender is one of Israel’s foremost photographers. Using a hand-held camera and digital software, Frydlender has developed a distinct technique in which he creates large-scale photographic composites both visually alluring and conceptually tantalizing. Stitching together thousands of individual frames in a mosaic-like pattern, Frydlender constructs elaborate, intricate compositions of thought-provoking scenarios. 

Following his solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2007, Frydlender was invited to be a resident at the 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, CA, where he shot the raw materials for his LA Photographs (2008-2011). Over the following years, Frydlender painstakingly assembled each composition within the series to create an extensive body of work that explores the Los Angeles cityscape, from luxurious houses in Malibu to tourists visiting Rodeo Drive and street dwellers on Venice Beach.

Frydlender’s camera, in its sobriety and earnestness, captures the wide spectrum of human gestures that constitute LA’s urban fabric—unembellished and without judgment, prejudice or ideology. In these compositions, popular culture, excessive capitalism and street subcultures are seamlessly woven together through the acute gaze of an ultimate outsider. Here, class, ethnicity, politics, leisure and social status are equal players on the picture plane, evoking new and overlooked narratives for the viewer to contemplate and explore. Reality, as brought forth by Frydlender, is not under scrutiny as in his previous bodies of work; rather, it is presented as an honest account of the incredible diversity of life and cultures that exist within one city.  

Questioning the properties of photography as a narrative document, Frydlender’s images are more than meets the eye. In leaving subtle clues for the viewer, such as recurring figures or sites, Frydlender expands the notion of time and space within the medium of photography. 

In 2007, Frydlender was the first Israeli artist to be given a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York with his exhibition Place and Time, presenting 10 large-scale photographs that took aim at contemporary politics in his native Israel.

Frydlender currently lives and works in Tel Aviv. He studied film and television at the University of Tel Aviv, graduating in 1980. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; The Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv; The Jewish Museum, Paris, France; among others. His work is held in the collections of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, CA; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, CA; the Jewish Museum in New York, NY; and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv.