 "America in the 1950s" | 2009-10-29 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2F2THRIPDEMHL |
| Robert Frank's pictures of America in the 1950s are comparable in depth and perceptiveness to Dorothea Lange's pictures of the 1930s. They are in black and white and call you back to look at them again and again. Composition is excellent. I had not heard of Robert Frank until recently. His photographic work, however, is excellent. |
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 "Outstanding, but small trim size & beware of thieves overcharging!" | 2009-09-29 |
| - Reviewed By huw_the_book |
| This is an outstanding collection of photographs. The drawbacks: The book's trim size (height & width) is surprisingly small for a collection of photographs. And WATCH OUT -- for some reason, there are real con artists charging $150 and more even though this book can be bought NEW for less than $40. |
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| "Inspiring" | 2009-05-27 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3MNP84BU4P91B |
| Robert Frank changed the world of photography with this collection of work. I think every young photographer should own and study this book. |
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| "Just a Suggestion:" | 2009-05-18 |
| - Reviewed By sidereusnuntius |
If you want to understand the USA of today, 2009, there's no better time and place to start than with America in the mid 1950s, when the "post-war-cold-war-post-cold-war" culture first took shape, at the threshold of: rock and roll and youth culture; clvil rights, the end of Jim Crow, 'crossover' culture; global immigration, the culture of diversity; college as a normal expectation for lower-middle class kids; the Beat Generation, Hippies, the turn-on-drop-out culture; two kids, two income families, two cars in every garage, and above all a TV in every home. You'd have been quite a prophet if you'd foreseen 'what we are today' on the basis of 'what we were in 1950,' but the seeds were there.
If you want to 'see' the 1950s, you can do it. You don't need a time-machine. The 85 photographs in this famous collection, taken 'on the road' by the German-Swiss Robert Frank, are worth at least 85,000 words. All in black-and-white, eclectic and experimental in darkroom technology, almost none of them of 'famous' people or familiar sights, these carefully and thoughtfully sequenced photographs reveal more of the shadows upon the American Dream than the sparkling spot lights, but they are as uncompromisingly honest as a dental X-ray. Not a speck of caries can be hidden. Frank saw through the superficial smiles of the 1950s to the cavities of core city and rural poverty, racism, sexism, crassness, and forced conformity - the grotesque 1950s that Flannery O'Connor depicted in Wise Blood and other works, that James Dean and Marlon Brando portrayed in films, and that Jack Kerouac tried to flee by taking to "the road."
If you want to understand Kerouac - or the appeal of Kerouac to a generation of young Americans - you couldn't do better than spend some hours looking at these photos of the culture he fled from. And in fact, Kerouac himself played a role in getting Frank's work recognized and published. The introduction to the first edition of The Americans is possibly Kerouac's most intelligent and coherent piece of social analysis, almost a manifesto of dissatisfaction with the stifling mediocrity of his contemporary USA.
Robert Frank was above all a photographer. A camera artist. The compositional and technical innovations that he achieved in this and other thematic collections of photos nudged the aesthetic of photography in directions that are still evident even in commercials during football games or in fashion shots for auto ads. The huge touring exhibit of his work, now on display at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, has reminded me of his powerful impact both as a visual artist and as a social commentator. Don't miss it if you have a chance! |
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| "Looking In" | 2009-04-20 |
| - Reviewed By robin_friedman |
In 1955 - 1956, Robert Frank (b. 1924), an American photographer born in Switzerland, restlessly crossed the United States several times by car to photograph people and places as he found them. He gradually culled through thousands of photographs to select 83 images for his book, "The Americans" published initially in Paris in 1958 and in the United States in 1959 by Grove Press. In its initial publication, "The Americans" sold only 600 copies and received negative reviews. Its stature has grown with time. The book is now an American icon.
The United States publication of "The Americans" included an introduction by Frank's friend, Jack Kerouac, which had earlier been rejected by the French publisher. Frank did well in asking Kerouac to write the introduction. Years earlier, Kerouac had made a series of mad journeys across the United States resulting in his famous novel, "On the Road." Kerouac's book shows more of a romantic spirit than the unsentimental photographs taken by his friend. Kerouac's introduction captures the spirit of Frank's photographs and of Frank's portrayal of America and offers comments on several individual photos. It deserves its place as part of Frank's masterwork.
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the book, the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. presented a major exhibition of Frank's work, titled "Looking In" which included the 83 photographs of "The Americans" presented in the order of Frank's book, together with other photographs that Frank took, including many photographs he took while he crossed America that did not make their way into the book. I was fortunate to visit the exhibition yesterday to see the photographs first hand. The National Gallery of Art has also published an encyclopedic version of Frank's book, "Looking In" which is large and expensive and includes much material in addition to Frank's now iconic collection of 83 photographs. My review here is of Frank's initial collection with Kerouac's introduction. The book is much less expensive than the reissue, is easier to handle, and provides the original version of Frank's masterpiece.
Frank's pictures do indeed draw the view into the scenes he depicts. The photographs include men and women, whites and blacks, rich and poor. The photographs show a certain loneliness, isolation, and unhappiness, regardless of social class. Thus, there are photographs of a lovely young woman operating an elevator, and of a hard-faced young woman behind a restaurant counter staring fixedly at the viewer. There is a photograph of a wealthy couple in Miami, of lavishly dressed gamblers at a Nevada casino, and of the elegant guests at a New York City cocktail party, drinks in hand, to benefit a school of art. Frank shows a segregated bus in New Orleans, and a scene of a stoic African American nurse holding a white baby in South Carolina. He photographs places, as well, a bar in Detroit, a collection of rubbish in the back yard of a Los Angeles home, that reminded me of works by Charles Bukowski, and the starkness of a men's bathroom and shoeshine stand - which Kerouac described as a place where the ladies don't go.
The photographs suggest the fascination of American's with their cars - one of the best works in the collection is the picture of the dividing strip of an open road at moonlight. They also show the fascination of many American's with the products of Hollywood - with starlets, cowboys, and television - together with the inauthenticity and emptiness of these concerns. Politicians, such as the photograph of the "city fathers" of Hoboken, New Jersey early in the collection, and of wheeling-dealing. cigar-smoking delegates at the Democratic Party's Presidential convention in 1956 (all men) come across as arrogant, crude, and ignorant. Many of the photographs are draped with flags, or other symbols, and many include comments on American religion, from an African American preacher who traveled up and down the Mississippi River for years to bring people to God, to the crosses, churches, and calls to repentance that dot the American landscape, to orthodox American Jews at the banks of the East River on Yom Kippur casting their sins into the water.
For all the melancholy, loneliness, and shallowness they convey, Frank's photographs show an understanding of the United States and a love of its people and places. His photographs of young people capture the alienation that has become commonplace since the 1950s, but also the search for love and meaning. His photographs capture the breadth of the United States, the difficulties of race relations, and the feelings of desolation, conformity, and tension, as people strive for financial security.
I was fortunate to have the opportunity to see Frank's photographs themselves at the National Gallery. This book of Frank's 83 photographs, together with Kerouac's words, offers the reader the opportunity to share, return to, and reflect upon Frank's photographic vision.
Robin Friedman |
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| "Worth the Money" | 2009-03-09 |
| - Reviewed By rivertripper |
The controversy surrounding this book is the perfectly natural - even compelled - result of the fact that 83 pictures cannot begin to represent the absolute infinite number of perspectives on life in the United States - or, the world, for that matter. Indeed, that it is titled "The Americans," with the intimation that it is a definitive photographic explication of the topic, demands the debate. Nevertheless, the pictures are deeply evocative and I am so pleased to have it in my library.
One other note on Mr. Frank. I became familiar with him through an interview on the Bob Edwards radio show related to the fiftieth anniversary of the book's publication. In that interview, Mr. Frank noted that he saw southerners in the fifties as "arrogant in their righteousness," and went to express his gratitude that things had changed since then. Having been born in the deep south in 1954, and having lived here all my life, I share some of Mr. Frank's gratitude that things have changed. However, pockets of the South remain backwards, despite the changes that have taken place around them. In these pockets, folks remain overbearing in their righteousness - arrogant and primitive in their fundamentalist religious faith. Often as not they abuse - simply because they can get away with it - those who don't think according to their prescribed and, sadly, myopic "norms." In these areas, anti-intellectualism is seen as a positive character trait.
But, if you have a genuine interest in - and are open to the idea of - seeing the world through insightful eyes, you wouldn't be wasting your money on this book. |
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