Ｏｎｌｉｎｅ Ｐｒｅｍｉｕｍ VVIP+++ The Americans by Robert Frank

Steidl; Revised edition (May 15, 2008)

The Americans by Robert Frank

The Americans by Robert Frank is Before making my overall appraisal I feel it necessary to define what I think the US was in the 50s. The most powerful nation on earth, with a technological and industrial prowess way beyond that of any other country in the world. In spite of lacking the more extensive social security of later years, it was a time of relative equality, unlike the 1.0% at the top which we now decry, and the working poor. Americans were very proud of their country, and for many good reasons. Leaving aside the situation of the black people, whose struggle required decades more, there was a sense of progress, of belief in the American dream, when an assembly worker earned enough to easily put his kids through college, own two cars, visit Europe. It was the era of suburban paradise that all aspired to. Of course there were those on the margins, the poor and even outcast, but even they were rich in comparison to their European counterparts living in bombed out cities, not to mention those in developing countries. This was a time when the architecture of American cities reached for the sky, and its government for the moon. It was the beginning of the iconic American culture of fast food, pop music, Hollywood movies and so on.So now, I ask myself, does the brilliant, incomparable photography of Robert Frank reflect this ? My answer is that there are some photos ( drugstore Detroit, assembly line, drive-in movie, covered car, casino, Met Life building, etc, ) that do reflect that America. And indeed others portray a typically American character: Rodeo, Fourth of July, Candy Store, and a few others. The photos of black people are poignant and true to that era. Yet I find that Frank’s incredible photographs dwell too much on a sombre side, which certainly existed but was not the overriding spirit of the era, or of the country’s driving force: that everyone should have an equal chance. This is where I think Frank comes up short; there are missing photos here. ( Maybe it’s because he is Swiss, from a country that did not suffer the ravages of two world wars, and where everything was small and in Teutonic order at the time he headed for America ) . To make my point: Imagine if a photographer was charged with the task of capturing 15th century Florence, and took photos of the dead and wounded in the many battles of the time, or of the smelly and dark back alleys of the city inhabited by the poor, or the low-life thugs who wandered the streets ! He would have missed Da Vinci, the Cupola of Brunelleschi, the tower of Giotto, the Renaissance Itself.The mastery of the art is patent in every one of these photographs and justify appreciating and owning this book just for that reason. Yet I am reluctant to feel it is a true portrayal of the America of the time. For this reason I give it three stars.

The Americans by Robert Frank is these pictures really speak to me. I've picked this book up several times now and I find new elements each time. One of these days, i'll have a photographer over for dinner and perhaps I can get educated on some of the techniques and nuance used by Mr. Frank. On a personal note, I was excited to see pictures of the Gratiot drive-in, a place I have fond memories of growing up.

The Americans by Robert Frank is 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!

The Americans by Robert Frank is Somethings just go together. Peanutbutter and jelly. Knotty pine paneling in a fishing-lake bar. Bouffants on R&B singers. And Jack Kerouac's introduction to 83 stark b/w photos ("lugubrious" Jack might say) shot by Robert Frank in 1955 / 1956 as he traveled the lower 48, funded by a Guggenheim Foundation grant. The book: The Americans is a terrific arty, documentary commentary on mid-20th-century America.I would have said the book is worth having for the Kerouac introduction alone--because it is so good....so....so Kerouac--until I reverently turned the pages, which is what one should do when viewing a collection of photos, drawings, or art and was delighted to remain in the desperate, yearnful, plain-is-the-new-god mood that Kerouac had expertly created in his introduction. Frank's photos capture the everyday in all of its beauty. Many of the photos look like rejects from the envelope of prints eagerly picked up from the 1950's or 1960's photo lab where you have spinster Aunt Millie asking why did you waste film on this--they're not even looking at the camera, or it's a bunch of people at a funeral, or it's a road at night.Get this book.