Robert Frank, 1924-2019

This past week the great documentary photographer Robert Frank passed away. You will find a number of tributes to him on the Internet.

I have written about Frank several times on this site, and for me his book The Americans is one of the most cherished in my photographic library. Here is what I wrote:

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!

As mentioned in my short review above I was able to see the 2009 landmark exhibit of his monumental workentitled Looking In: Robert Frank’sThe Americansat the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. I was also lucky to attend 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.

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