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Robert Frank 'There are too many pictures now'
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Stuff stuffed in this section 'Swiss, unobtrusive, nice' - writers on Frank 'Jukeboxes and Coffins' - a critical look at 'The Americans' 'There are too many pictures now' - career overview Click on the stuff subject and watch it appear below as if by magic |
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Robert Frank: Not Just The Americans. His work may be popularly defined by eighty-three photos out on the road in Fifties America but there's more to his near-sixty year career; travel shoots, fashion shoots, rock and roll movies, mutilated Polaroid's... Initially influenced by the Swiss montage photographer Jakob Tuggener, Frank developed a fluid and spontaneous style. His candid approach echoes that of Bill Brant and Walker Evans. Moving to America, Frank produced work for a number of magazines and newspapers. He travelled to Peru and, in 1951, to Europe. In Paris, London and Wales he found subjects that exhibited emotion beyond the apparent visual cliché. They captured not only individuals' feelings but also the milieu of a post-war society. Returning to America he produced his classic photographic 'essay', The Americans, in 1958. His style of voyeuristic documentary photography continued through studies in Detroit, Chicago, New York and Coney island. Cinematography played a key role in Frank's career. Either side of The Americans, he was involved in the Beat Poet movie Pull My Daisy(1959) and the controversial Rolling Stones tour documentary, Cocksucker Blues (1972) as well as Candy Mountain (1987). The Stones also gave Frank the commission for the cover art of their 1972 Rolling Stones album 'Exile On Main Street'. A faux-collage, the picture is of a tattoo parlour wall covered in black and white prints. It could be the most widely viewed of Frank's works.Frank's inherent introspection surged to the fore in his later works. He reacted to the death of his daughter in a plane crash and his son's schizophrenia with raw and emotional works. Some, such as 'Sick of Goodby's', are composed of Polaroid's that have been scratched into, as if to show that this instant image couldn't convey his depth of feeling. Recent work has seen Frank use digital prints made from Polaroid photographs annotated with hand written text, such as 'My Father’s Coat'. As postcards to himself, such works highlight Frank's inexorable awareness of life lived and life imagined. The work of Robert Frank has taken many forms through his career, but one theme has remained constant; his work is a mirror, sometimes reflecting the world he sees, sometimes reflecting the world within him.
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Ben James
- Coal Miner, Caerau, Wales 1953
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From The Bus, New York 1958 |
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Exile On Main Street, |
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Sick of Goodby’s, 1978 | |||||
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My Father’s Coat, 2000 | |||||
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