The pictures on these pages are in effect deft. witty, spanking little poems of hate. They are the work of Lee Friedlander. 

One of  the most accomplished and sharp-minded of the younger American photographers. It just happens that the wan 

reflected light from home television boxes casts  an unearthly pall over the quotidian objects and accouterments we all live

with. This electronic pallor etiolates our bed boards and pincushions, our mute scratch pads and our inglorious pillboxes. 

It is a half-light we never notice,  as though we were dumb struck by those very luminous screens we profess to disdain. 

That disdain is not much mitigated by Friedlander's selective potshots. What are these faces that moon out from the screen? 

Taken  out of context as they are here, that baby  might  be selling skin rash, the careful, good-looking women might   be 

categorically unselling marriage and the home and total daintiness. Here, then, from an expert  hand, is a pictorial account 

of what TV- screens light does to rooms and to the things in them. The human denizens of  the rooms are purposely left out.

In this atmosphere of  eclipse, the sense of citizen presence is actually increased.  For the thousandth time, let it be said that 

pictures which are really doing their work don't need words. Friedlander's stinging and though amusing, bitterly funny 

observations want no line captions, and in this instance they had better be called just One, Two, Three, Fie, and s on.

   Walker Evans