“The Americans” by Robert Frank
We saw the Robert Frank exhibition “The Americans” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art today. I’d seen some of the images before but never the complete collection.
The black and white photographs taken in the mid 1950’s are themselves iconic; originally reviled by most and now revered. However I found the groupings and ordering of the images was even more inspirational. Seeing the photos laid out side by side, a little like the contact sheets that Frank worked with in laying out the photos was so much more effective than flipping through the book. It’s much easier to see the clever links from image to image. The group of images with stars; on a flag, in a dining car, of a Hollywood starlet that overlap with a group of people with a look; the man in the dining car, the preoccupied look of the starlet, the hesitance of the young man, the arrogance of the boy in the back of the car. I could have stayed for hours more trying to decipher these links.
Born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1924 he immigrated to the United States at the age of 22. In his early years in New York, he worked as a freelance fashion photographer, however managed a rare second career as a fine arts photographer, acknowledged by Edward Steichen, curator and Director of the Museum of Modern Art who included him in an exhibition of “51 American Photographers” and also aided his successful application for a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship grant.
With that grant he travelled 10,000 miles in 10 months around the United States taking 767 rolls of film which resulted in 27,080 frames, of which he printed 1000 8”x10” images from which he finally selected 83 to be published in the book “The Americans”.
His non-native eye saw images that most US born photographers would have missed as too ordinary or obvious. His heightened awareness often picked out what were clichés of the culture of the time; the American flag, cars, diners, cowboys, Hollywood, politicians. He also managed to capture the emotions and the soul of the nation. Frank spoke of looking to present “the humor, the sadness, the EVERYTHING-ness and American-ness” in this series.
So heavy are the implied messages that many of the compositions of his photos look very contrived and set up, and yet it is only his skill and intuition that led him to those many “right place, right time” moments to freeze them for posterity. The famous picture that graced the cover of his first American edition by Grove Press in 1959, of the trolley bus in New Orleans with a white man, a white woman, a white boy, a white girl, the black young man and the black woman captures the social order of the times. In another image, of a sparse kitchen, the morning sun creates a halo like effect on the table with the evangelist Oral Roberts on the TV in the background. He couldn’t have set up the compositions better if he had tried.
The thing is though, as with all first class photographers, there is nothing frozen about the images. They easily convey the surrounding space and time, the story and the emotions that cocoon that printed moment. He thought to convey the “assumptions and desires of the people depicted.”
He also had an eye for comparison, juxtaposition and incongruity; the cowboy in New York, the smiling Santa above a stony faced waitress, the black woman holding an impossibly white baby, a brand new jukebox in a diner with mismatched chairs and a baby on a pad on the wooden unfinished floor, leather biker eating astride a bike next to a police officer. He highlighted the discord between the wealth and optimism of the 1950s versus the class and racial barriers that existed simultaneously.
Ahead of his time, he addressed current issues that many were not yet ready to confront; racism, alienation of the youth, dissatisfaction with political leaders and a growing numbness to the overwhelming consumerism of the times.
He also was ahead of his time in his composition; the lack of focus on prime subjects, discordant lighting, imperfect exposures and uneven planes of image. They were totally alien to the expected style of photography of the times. The random-esque feel of many of his images were not appreciated.
Many suggest that the final result was a distillation of sadness with only the occasional expression of joy. However I think Frank saw the 1950s with a much more pragmatic view. He just uncovered the truth behind the perfection that many of his contemporaries tried to promote. The exhibition quotes Antoine de Saint-Exupéry “It is only with the heart that we can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” It is an excellent prognosis of this body of work. In effect Robert Frank succeeded in the task that Edward Steichen set him in 1952 when he encouraged him to study “the soul of man”.
The exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York continues until January 3rd 2010.
Additional Links:
An excellent podcast of an interview of Robert Frank by Sarah Greenough from the National Gallery of Art who co-curated this exhibition.
A review by Holland Cotter of the New York Times “America, Captured in a Flash” September 24, 2009
