By merging the specificity of the black-and-white photographic images, the inverted logic of the linear containers, and the poetic depths of the encaustic skin, Friedberg traces a metaphorical interior space in which logical systems of mapping cannot operate.

These are the terms through which Friedberg links her art to Surrealism, whose methods she identifies as 'bizarre juxtapositions, the sense of dislocation, (and) psychic isolation." But, as Friedberg stresses, there is a fundamental distinction between the "subject matter" of the historical Surrealists and her own: Friedberg's photocollages articulate waking fantasies that are specifically maternal. Stating that "my children and my house are my centers, my anchors." many of Friedberg’s photocollages focus on children. As Love Mom, French Rope and 1.7 x 7.2 attest, however, these images are decidedly not linked to the "historical grammar" or stock metaphors of childhood; images that cast childhood as a golden age of innocence, safety, and stability. They are, instead, images seen through the eyes of a mother who, as protector and guardian, recognizes the other side of childhood - vulnerability, weakness, change, bafflement. Although Friedberg's fragments are selected from more conventional photographic displays of childhood, her visual quotations acknowledge the uncontrolled world and the instability of circumstances that threaten childhood.