About Robert Frank's The Americans
Robert Frank—Culture hero
“…. gave me that copy of Frank’s book [The Americans]. “I think you’ll enjoy this,” he said. And wham, there it was, this huge, deep, dark poem about America that gave me something to encounter day after day after day. So that fed me. "
Joel Meyerowitz.
In 1955-56, Swiss-born Frank photographed America on 2 year road trip. He shot over 500 rolls of film. The 83 photos eventually published in The Americans tore the veneer off post war America. Working in the tradition of photoethnography and photo journalism. He photographed without sentimentality, but with emotion.
Frank’s work contains some singularly stunning images. However, he was very conscious of early theories of montage and sequencing. It’s hard to get the full effect of the book through isolated photographs. The book builds. When the book is viewed as a whole, his thematic, recurring use of use of elements: flags, cars, uniforms, signs, media, the road, form an opera-like whole, rich with leitmotif.
Frank was mentored by Walker Evans. He worked with Jack Kerouac (JK wrote the foreword for the US edition of the book) and the Rolling Stones (how cool is that!). Frank mentored Ralph Gibson and Gibson printed some of his best early work on Frank’s Focomat enlarger .
Franks photos are often blurry, dark, grainy and not technically perfect. He often photographed at night and in dimly lit interiors. His photos deal with the juncture of reality and the American Dream. Frank was brutal and unflinching in his use of symbol and metaphor to critically portray the American scene. “Death is here, and celebration. Loneliness and hope, decay and poetry, grief and survival, and those rare moments when a man happens on his own essence." Always, at the end of it, is belief in the future, however hopeless that belief may be.
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This pool will be for photos in the style of Robert Frank's The Americans. Best to familiarize yourself with RF before posting. More later. Here's a good introduction to Robert Frank
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