“Black and white are the colors of photography. To me they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected.” – Robert Frank
This could be enough to put the great Robert Frank in my Favorite Top 10, but there is something more, and alone it puts Frank on my list. His book The Americans is one of the most cherished in my photographic library. I have written about Frank a number of times and here yet again is what I wrote about that seminal masterpiece:
“Robert Frank, The Americans
Like Helen of Troy, the “face that launched a thousand ships”, Robert Frank, through his seminal work, The Americans, influenced countless street and documentary photographers and the trajectory of photography itself!
There have been at least four editions this incredible book that have been published since 1958. Each one is slightly different. My copy is published by Scalo and leaves the captions that go with each photograph to the very end of the book.
What matters is that Frank may have taken the ultimate photographic road trip across America just before everything changed forever with the Sixties. And perhaps Frank’s unvarnished view of America and American life may have been as significant as rock and roll, the counter culture and the rest of the fall out from the Viet Nam War in changing the way we looked at ourselves.
During his year and half year project Frank exposed 767 rolls of film, making 27,000 pictures. Ultimately he edited them down to 83 images. And what images they are!
83 perfectly sequenced black and white photographs tell the story, and an incredible and shocking story it must have been for a society used to seeing nothing but a sugar coated view of reality. It certainly was not welcomed by the mainstream photography and art world. Nothing would be the same again, but we are surely better off for his brilliant vision.
I have been lucky enough to see several Frank exhibits including one showing all 83 photographs, along with his proof sheets! I was also fortunate to be able to attend a lecture he gave in support of one of the exhibits.
In short, your photographic library must include a copy of this book. Buy any one the editions, new or used; it doesn’t matter. Just get one!”
In 2009 I saw the landmark exhibit of his monumental work entitled Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. I also attended a terrific lecture he gave in Washington. While both of these events are and will remain fond memories for me, I will always have Frank’s wonderful book to study and ponder whenever the need for inspiration occurs. And now The Americans resonates with me more than ever before. Why? Because I believe America is truly at a crossroads. And just as was the case with the America that Frank laid bare for all to see in 1958, we now live in an America that we now know is not the America we thought we lived in. Not our country, not our state, not our neighborhood. It was all there, but we didn’t know it, or worse yet, we didn’t want to see it, and when we did we didn’t want to believe it.
Why for me is Frank so great and why is he so important now? Because he dared to find the unvarnished truth and show it, and when he couldn’t get his work published, he kept on fighting until it was. Frank is an inspiration for me and he should be for you, not necessarily to discover and document a cross-country experience … that is impractical for most of us … but to document the reality of your own America as you see it … wherever you find or experience it.
Stay safe,
Michael