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| Robert Frank, Elevator - Miami Beach, 1955 |
Robert Frank died on 9 September 2019
Frank’s The Americans was published in 1958/59. It is, I think, one of the great works of art of the Twentieth Century.
Frank’s The Americans was published in 1958/59. It is, I think, one of the great works of art of the Twentieth Century.
The pictures rewrote the rules of photography… Their blurry casualness
and tilted frames jazzed nearly every photographer of note to come along in the
60’s. (Woodward, G., 1994)
Anybody doesnt like these pitchers dont like potry, see? Anybody dont
like potry go home see Television shots of big hatted cowboys being tolerated
by kind horses.
Robert Frank, Swiss, unobtrusive, nice, with that little camera that he
raises and snaps with one hand he sucked a sad poem right out of America onto
film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world.
To Robert Frank I now give this message: You got eyes.
And I say: That little ole lonely elevator girl looking up sighing in an
elevator full of blurred demons, what’s her name & address? (Kerouac, J. 1959)
When Garry
Winogrand was asked to talk about other photographers’ work that he found
interesting he picked out Robert Frank’s picture of a gas station:
It’s… a
photograph of nothing, there’s nothing happening there. I mean, the subject
matter has no dramatic ability of its own whatsoever and yet somehow it looks,
what it is, it’s the most mundane—and there’s nothing happening, there’s no
physical action… When [Robert Frank] took that photograph he couldn’t possibly
know—he just could not know that it would work, that it would be a photograph.
He knew he probably had a chance. In other words, he cannot know what that’s
going to look like as a photograph. … I don’t give a rap about gasoline
stations. . . (Winogrand, G. 2012)
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| Robert Frank, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1955 |
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| Robert Frank, Covered Car - Long Beach, California, 1956 |
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| Robert Frank, Car Accident - U.S. 66, between Winslow and Flagstaff, Arizona, 1956 |
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| Robert Frank, Bar - Miami BeaNew York City, 1955 |
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| Robert Frank, Los Angeles, 1956 |
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| Robert Frank, Rodeo - New York City, 1955 |
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| Robert Frank, Indianapolis, 1956 |
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| Robert Frank, U.S. 90, en route to Del Rio, Texas, 1955 |
Cobb, Jelani (2019) “How Robert Frank’s Photographs Helped DefineAmerica”, The New Yorker
Dawidoff, Nicholas (2015) “The Man Who Saw America”, The New York
Times Magazine
Gefter, Phillip (2019) “Robert Frank Dies: Pivotal DocumentartyPhotographer Was 94”, The New York Times
Hopkinson, Amanda (2019), “Robert Frank obituary”, The Guardian
Kerouac, Jack (1959) [Introduction to Robert Frank (1993) The
Americans, Manchester: Cornerhouse Publication)
Murphy, Michael David (2014)
“American Beauty”, Medium
O’Hagan, Sean (2019) “Robert Frank: the outsider genius whosephotographs laid Bare America’s soul”, The Guardian
Winogrand, Garry (2012) “Monkeys Make the Problem More Difficult – ACollective Interview with Garry Winogrand (1970)”, ASX: American Suburb X
Woodward, Richard B. (1994) “Where Have You Gone, Robert Frank?”, The
New York Times
