Reading the line of a poem twice… the work of Robert Frank
Swiss-born photographer Robert Frank was quoted in Life magazine in 1951 as saying “When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.”
This turn of phrase is delightful as it really embodies, in plain English, what is great not just about Frank’s photography but about any photography that a viewer finds enjoyable. There are some pictures that, no matter how many times you look at it you never get tired of seeing it. For me, that would be pictures like Robert Capa’s shot of the falling soldier in the Spanish Civil War and Sally Mann’s ‘candy cigarette’ picture of her daughter.
Moving back to Frank, however, what I particularly like about his work is the fact that he fearlessly trod where others didn’t during the maelstrom of cultural and monetary divides of 1950s America. His most famous work was the 1958 set of portraits of life in America, which he called The Americans. His failure initially to get it published in America and the fact that during his travels he was thrown in jail once and told he had an hour to get out of town by a sherriff elsewhere tells you what you need to know about the edginess of Frank’s work.
At a time when racism and division throughout society was rife, he took the pictures of the parts of society who had no voice and showcased the inequality that was present so widely across the United States. For this he should be applauded and it is also credit to the US that over the ensuing years, The Americans became a celebrated work of photography which has been recognised many times by top galleries in places like San Francisco and New York.
Research:
The Americans by Robert Frank and Jack Kerouac (Steidl, latest publication 2008)
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