In this tight, static photograph, "Parade — Hoboken, New Jersey,” 1955, Frank recorded two ordinary women in a drab building looking out at a festive scene that they can hardly see through the American flag draped in front of them. They symbolize the powerless poor, who see but cannot act. Private collection, San Francisco. —Photograph ©Robert Frank, from The Americans
:For more than a half century, Robert Frank (b 1924) has repeatedly broken accepted rules and flouted well-worn conventions to expand the expressive potential of photography. He has pioneered a revolutionary approach to photography that combines autobiography, emotion and poetry with gritty reality. His depictions of tension between the personal and universal — the internal and external worlds — have made his work the stuff of legend, and has earned him a place among the world's most important photographers.
Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the groundbreaking publication that changed the course of Twentieth Century photography and helped America see itself more clearly, the National Gallery of Art has organized "Looking In: Robert Frank's
The Americans
." After recently closing in Washington, D.C., the exhibition is on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art through August 23. The exhibition is curated by Sarah Greenough, the National Gallery's senior curator of photographs. The museum is the repository of a large collection of Frank photographs and related material.
The show utilizes 150 photographs to examine both Frank's process in taking the pictures and assembling the book. Included are all 83 images from
The Americans
, as well as 17 books, 15 manuscripts and 22 contact sheets. Insights are offered into Frank's earlier work that presaged his seminal book.
In "Funeral — St Helena, South Carolina,” 1955, three well-dressed African American men waiting outside a rural funeral in the South look off to the left, observing events outside the frame. Their dignified and attentive appearance belies their status as second-class citizens. Susan and Peter MacGill. —Photograph ©Robert Frank, from The Americans
"
The Americans
is as powerful and provocative today as it was 50 years ago," says Earl A. Powell III, the National Gallery's director. Adds curator Greenough, Frank's book "was unlike any photography book ever published" and revolutionized the course of photography.
Described by Jack Kerouac as "the poet of the camera," Frank was born in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1924. He came to maturity during World War II when he and his Jewish parents — his mother was Swiss and his father German — lived in fear that the Nazis might invade Switzerland. This experience undoubtedly contributed to the photographer's sense of always "being on the outside, trying to look inside" — of observing society from a distance.
Starting at 16, Frank served as an apprentice to several photographers, learning how to light objects, process film and make technically perfect prints. He was exposed to the Bauhaus-inspired style of "New Photography" that emphasized sharp focus and concentrated attention on formal elements.
During these early years, through looking and reading and trial and error, Frank began to evolve his own approach to the medium, deciding how he wanted to compose his photographs and, to some extent, what he wanted to photograph. Many of the stylistic techniques that he would later employ, such as low-angle or over-the-shoulder studies of people on the street, and subjects that he would explore, like flags or parades, were present in his early work.
