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A Review of “Looking In… Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans’” The early rooms of the exhibit are dedicated to back-story. (Born 1924 in Switzerland, began taking photos in 1941, aged 17, came to the USA in 1947, at 23.) He shot extensively in England, Wales, France and Peru as a youngster, and the work was dynamic and polished, the pathos palpable. His photographs of bowler-hat-wearing, bespoke-suit-clad bankers in London are iconic: the critique of power and capitalism woven in with the flawless structure and tonal range. They’re timely in the current context. In the second room, the curators have displayed Frank’s Guggenheim application and several correspondence letters to Walker Evans sent during the excursion. (I had no idea Evans was his mentor, but it makes sense.) The document shows that Frank conceived his vision of America before he set out to shoot it. He visualized “… a town at night, a parking lot … the man who owns three cars and the man who owns none, the farmer and his children, a new house and a warped clapboard house…the dream of grandeur, advertising … the faces of the leaders and the faces of the followers, gas tanks and post offices and backyards…”. The 83 prints from "The Americans" were simply astonishing, and the exhibit was so packed I had queue up to ogle, then shuffle three steps to the right. The gelatin silver prints engendered a level of clarity and three-dimensionality that my well- worn book could never replicate. The larger image size let the details breathe as well. Only one print had yellowed noticeably with age, and therefore seemed out of place. I was drawn to the little elements that exacerbated visual tension, like an awkwardly bent arm, a telephone pole looming like a cross, a desert vanishing point that refused to meet the horizon, shimmering reflections in a trolley car window, soot settled on a Montana rooftop, or the beckoning gaze from a perfectly beautiful waitress. I've often felt that the photos delivered their message in an instant, like a good joke, but in person they were slow and luxurious. Obviously, the jukebox, the car, the flag, the cross, the television, the diner; these symbols dominate "The Americans," and have been discussed at length through the years. I wonder if he didn't take some of them off the table for the rest of us, sucking their juice and leaving the spent shell. Frank, the beatnik, saw the grime and grace under the veneer of "The 50's," and presaged the revolutionary decade that followed.
Frank’s medium was black and white, and in a sense so was his vision.
Clear cut good guys and bad guys, but also a Black America and a White America. Not a lot in between. Perhaps one of the transvestites in New York City is a Latino? The two men in the car outside of Blackfoot are probably Native American. And he did throw in a photo of some Hassidic Jews on ferry. But that's it. So while America today synthesizes people from Mexico and Central America, South and South East Asia, and all GPS coordinates in between, I wonder how much of the pot was melting back then? It's hard to say without doing some demographic research. (No thanks.) Either way, the absence locks this vision in time. The exhibit is headed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art this September, and will certainly be the talk of the town. My advice to those of you in the Tri-State area and beyond: don't miss this show. The work really is that much better in person. Sure, everyone back East is perpetually busy, and yes, life is crazy… but give yourself and hour or two, take a chocolate bar to fight off the brain fry, and enjoy. |
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OK. I admit it. I chickened out the first time I went to visit “Looking In… Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans’” at SFMOMA this August. I was there to review the show, (rather than view it), and was more than a little intimidated. Fortunately, I summoned the courage to try again after a few minutes of awkward contemplation.
I did find it curious, though, that some aspects of his vision look a bit quaint in the ambient glow of the 21st Century. In “The Americans,” the fat cats are old, white, fat and ugly. (Dick Cheney, anyone?) His photos of African-American culture, in contrast, are dignified and empathetic. The same goes for his images of poor, rural, white Americans. Ennobling these subjects, he glorifies poverty, in a way. While I'm no Republican, the simplicity seems dated, now that we’ve become accustomed to nuance and moral ambiguity. (Don Draper, anyone?)
