Ebb and Flow

Von Lintel Gallery is excited to announce “Ebb and Flow”, our first exhibition of photography by Anthony Friedkin.

A Los Angeles native, Friedkin began photographing at the age of eight and was working in the darkroom by the time he was eleven. Early on, he used photography to explore his infatuation with the ocean and now, over 60 years later, he still travels the Southern California coast with a camera in hand. Friedkin feels strongly about the powerful energy of the ocean, the medium in which life began, and speaks of waves as "liquid sculpture, moving through space and time with ethereal beauty". This series visualizes that magnetism, as well as the inherent sensuality and beauty of the ocean. “Ebb and Flow” is an ode to the omnipotence and allure of the sea.

Friedkin extends his adoration of the ocean to include surf culture, in and out of the water. He believes in the power of extraordinary photographs that cannot be easily defined, but rather celebrate perception and its many layers of reality. The reality of surf culture is that it does not end when the surfers exit the sea, but rather, it carries over into how they live, party, and spend their time on land, often bleeding over into skateboard culture. “Ebb and Flow” delves into these intersections and presents the broader reality of surf culture.

“[Julian Cox, associate curator of photographs at The Getty Museum] feels Friedkin’s relationship with his hometown will have a significant place in the visual history of L.A. ‘Anthony is a highly responsive photographer to his environment,’ he says. ‘His strength lies in his ability to work in a sensitized state, to get in the trenches, so to speak, and capture the authentic moment as it occurs.’” – LA Times, 2003

Friedkin’s photography has been exhibited internationally since the 1970’s and is in the permanent collections of the Getty Museum, the George Eastman Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York and in San Francisco, to name a few.

For additional information or visual material please contact the gallery by email at gallery@vonlintel.com.