Lee Friedlander, like many who came of age in the 1950s, fell under the spell of photographers of the American social landscape who had come before him, especially Walker Evans and Robert Frank. Friedlander's dispassionate approach to his complex, yet everyday subjects is enhanced by the tendency of his wide-angle lens to compress each picture's disparate elements into an often uneasy alliance. The eccentric cropping and layering in this image of Atlantic City creates a kaleidoscopic effect in which billboards and photographs vie for our attention, including a picture of a woman whose dark bouffant hairdo perfectly echoes the shape of the Ferris wheel in the background.

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