“I’ve known Carol for a very long time and knew her work even before I met her.
It’s a pleasure to know that my guess about her sensitivity, about her concern for musicians,
and her love for the music, which helps her photograph and capture all these feelings, was proven right.
I love and will miss her as I get older and she gets younger so it seems to me.
She's a precious gem in a sea of black sand.
RON CARTER
“Images of dark and light are so intrinsic to our lives that we would take them
granted if there weren’t some people out here who give black, white and gray
the splendor of human penetration when they go after the special kinds whose
souls are rarely bagged by the camera. The heat of the image is what she
gets so often and with such originality that we are sometimes caught off guard.
Carol Friedman has mastered the art of directing her subjects, which is to say that
she understands how to get them beyond the posing which is a bad form of acting
and has less to do with the quality of their souls than it does with the way they would prefer
to have themselves documented. The photographer uses the term ”inciting the image”
to describe her method of creating a relationship between herself and the subject and the
circumstances that will allow a soul to appear for that necessary split second. Under her
virtuoso nudging—which sometimes has to be as quick as it must be charming—
their senses and their memories fuse and we see what makes them charismatic or we
understand something even music cannot express, which is how this anatomical
form or these facial features achieve telling power in space. In that way, her work
is the counterpart of the art of the invisible, which is music.”
STANLEY CROUCH
“I have seen many photographs of jazz musicians through the years,
but Carol Friedman’s are beyond category. She has illuminated
the very souls of these improvisers on and in the life force.”
NAT HENTOFF
“Jazz has always inspired photographers to be artists rather than mere
reporters and Carol Friedman’s work is a stunning extension of this tradition.
Her photographs are compelling aesthetic statements about each individual’s
inner life. With or without employing the context of performance or using
instruments as props, she brilliantly captures he subject’s emotional identity.”
ALBERT MURRAY