In 1970 Lee Friedlander published his second book, Self Portrait. This was the first volume published by Haywire Press, the press he founded with his wife Maria de Paoli. The volume included approximately 50 self-portraits made over the span of six years, and a text by John Szarkowski, who at the time was the director of the Department of Photography at MoMA.

This photograph taken on the streets of New York in 1966, one of the most recognizable from this series, depicts the Friedlander’s shadow on the back of a passerby. An innovative device in the history of photography, Friedlander used it on numerous occasions in order to introduce himself into the scene he was portraying. In Self Portrait, Friedlander usually presented himself within the images in a subtle fashion: reflected in a mirror, in the glass of a storefront, or in a window. On occasions, Friedlander did not present himself as a shadow or a reflection, but appeared in full, within a medium shot, meeting the spectators’ gaze.

Freidlander undertook an introspective exercise through these images; a process he has continued throughout his extensive career, as can be seen in the 2004 publication Family, an intimate journey beginning in 1958 that captured his family history.