Robert Frank was one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century, best known for his pioneering book, ‘The Americans’, densely packed with black and white photographs from his road trips across the US in the mid-50s.
The book subverted the rigidity of 20th century photojournalism, ‘defined by sharp, well-lit, classically composed pictures’; homages to American nationalism were the standard. Instead Frank’s images- documenting solitary individuals, funerals, unorthodox couples and unusual footprints of American culture- were urgent and graphic, similar to the early television transmissions.
‘I was tired of romanticism,’ Frank once said. ‘I wanted to present what I saw, pure and simple.’ The work he sought to produce was in direct contrast to the saccharine happiness presented on the glossy pages of magazines. He had come to detest the drive for conformity which dominated American society, his book peeled back this vision of the country, fuelled by the façade of light-hearted optimism plastered over the media. Yet, amongst his criticisms emerges a core idea of finding and ‘honouring what was true and good about the United States’, highlighting the ordinary people who deserved a truthful optimism in their communities and homes.
Robert Frank, “Welsh Miners,” 1953 © Robert Frank
Recognition for his work was by no means simple or sudden. Instead, it was initially ridiculed, with a popular photography magazine complaining about their “meaningless blur, grain, muddy exposures, drunken horizons, and general sloppiness.” Mr. Frank, the magazine said, was “a joyless man who hates the country of his adoption.” Born in Switzerland, Mr. Frank moved to New York at the age of 23 as an artistic refugee from what he considered to be the small-minded values of his native country. Evidently he found a space to communicate his ideas in the U.S. Despite their non-conforming nature, he met like minded individuals such as Jack Kerouac, who had documented his own cross-country trip in his 1957 novel ‘On the Road’. The sense of character which Kerouac procured from Frank was one of wisdom and curiosity, when talking about him he said “Robert Frank… sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world.”
Mr. Frank left more than impression on his friends and actually may have been the accidental father of what became known in the late 1960s as “the snapshot aesthetic,” a personal nonchalant style that aimed to document the authentic and spontaneous. His aesthetic was given further definition and legitimacy in 1967 in ‘New Documents’ at MoMA in New York. The seminal exhibition presented the work of Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander and Garry Winograd, who at the time were ‘relatively little known younger-generation beneficiaries’ of Mr. Frank’s pioneering style. The show established all three as important American artists.
“Trolley — New Orleans,” 1955.Credit…Robert Frank, via Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York
The photographs in “The Americans” were not Robert Frank’s only work, and can be seen as a prelude to his subsequent creations, for which he utilised a variety of mediums, making large Polaroid prints, video images, experimenting with text and graphic representation and producing films. Still, it is “The Americans” that are the most well known. Its ability to connect with an authentic America will forever stand the test of time.
Edited by Ayla Samson
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