In the early 1960s, Friedlander made a small series of photographs of television sets while traveling across America on two Guggenheim Foundation fellowships and on editorial assignment for several popular men's magazines. The witty, often ironic pictures provide intuitive commentary on the then-new medium as "the plug-in drug"; most were made in an appropriately modern, artificial space—a motel room—which is at once bedroom, living room, and theater.

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