Robert Frank, The Americans (Atget Photography)
While in Boulder, Colorado for a contemplative photography workshop, a friend mentioned Robert Frank, known for his book The Americans (paid link).She said he was certainly a man known for direct seeing and I wanted to learn more about his work. What I found was a man of unflinching honesty and no sentimentality who lives life on his own terms. He is in his 80’s now, still living in New York and sometimes in Nova Scotia.
Born in 1924 in Zurich, Switzerland, Frank came to the United States at the age of 23 and worked as a commercial photographer. He came in search of the American dream, but soon found another grittier side, an America too obsessed with money, and often dark and lonely. In New York, he found a community of photographers and writers, especially Edward Steichen and Walker Evans, and also Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.
This New York Times article shows images from and talks about a 1958 book of Frank’s called New York Is, a pre-cursor to the book that he is most known for, The Americans. In it, he “turns a dark, often lonely gaze on the city, as he was about to do powerfully for the rest of the country, reinventing the way America saw itself.” After being awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 1955, Frank travelled the country documenting American society at all levels. He whittled 28,000 images down to 83 for The Americans, published in 1958.
“Mr. Frank liberated the photographic image from the compositional tidiness and emotional distance of his predecessors. The ordinary, incidental moments captured in his pictures — and their raw, informal look — paved the way for photographers like Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand a decade later.” ~ Philip Gefter, NYTimes
Many reviewers derided the book when it first came out because it was a new type of photography, both in technique and subject matter. Frank used blur, grain, and exposure to express what he saw. And his images were of an America not pictured on television or in magazines. He shone a light on the dark side of America.
“The Americans – a book of pictures by a foreigner who came to America impulsively, traveled our roads restlessly, and by not fully knowing our language heard it correctly and told us, the way we could not, truths about ourselves.” ~ Holland Cotter, New York Times (September 24, 2009)
“Anybody don’t like these pitchers don’t like potry, see? Anybody don’t like potry go home see Television shots of big hatted cowboys being tolerated by kind horses. Robert Frank, Swiss, unobtrusive, nice, with that little camera that he raises and snaps with one hand he sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world.” ~ From the Introduction by Jack Kerouac
After the success of The Americans, Frank moved on to a career in filmmaking, although he never left photography behind. In the 1970’s he came out with another photography book, and began experimenting with telling stories using constructed images and collages. For a fascinating look at Frank as an artist and a man, I suggest you read this article from Vanity Fair (2008).
More on Robert Frank
There is a new DVD out about Robert Frank called Don’t Blink, available on iTunes
A Review of The Americans by Anthony Lane in The New Yorker (September 14, 2009)
Americans: The Book that Changed Photography – NPR
Robert Frank shooting Tom Waits for his record Rain Dogs
