Lee Freidlander broke out onto the North American photographic scene during the 1960s with works that were edgy and audacious. In that early stage the author practiced photography professionally photographing for magazines and jazz albums, while simultaneously adding to his archive of more personal images. The series The Little Screens was constructed from some of these photos and was published for the first time in Harper’s Bazaar in 1963. According to Walker Evans, who wrote a short text for the publication, the photographs were “deft, witty, spanking little poems of hate.”

Rooted in a realist photographic language and distanced from moral judgment and sentimentalism, the series focuses on the television screens Friedlander found in different accommodations and motel rooms throughout the country. The photographer captured the way in which numerous icons of popular culture, political figures, and the minor celebrities of the time found their way into North American homes through the TV. In an ironic tone, Friedlander recorded the changes that were occurring in society providing a testimony of what would later become the dominant medium in 20^th century mass culture.