BlackLab: Adventures in Still Pictures

Films – Robert Frank

Frank shot this roll of film in New Orleans in November, 1955. It contains two images, numbered 13 and 16 in the row outlined in red, that made Frank’s final cut for The Americans.

Today is Friday and that means the now legendary BlackLab Friday Film, inspired by collaborator Jonathan Hardman to do something on the equally legendary Robert Frank, we’ve put together a smorgasbord of epic proportions:

Robert Frank (born Switzerland 1942) is an important figure in American photography and film. His most notable work, the 1958 photographic book titled simply The Americans, was heavily influential in the post-war period, and earned Frank comparisons to a modern-day de Tocqueville for his fresh and skeptical outsider’s view of American society. Frank later expanded into film and video and experimented with compositing and manipulating photographs.

Though he was initially optimistic about United States society and culture, Frank’s perspective quickly changed as he confronted the fast pace of American life and what he saw as an overemphasis on money. He now saw America as an often bleak and lonely place, a perspective that became evident in his later photography. Frank’s own dissatisfaction with the control that editors exercised over his work also undoubtedly colored his experience. He continued to travel, moving his family briefly to Paris. In 1953, he returned to New York and continued to work as a freelance photojournalist for magazines including McCall’s, Vogue, and Fortune.  Source

‘Seeing The Americans in a college bookshop was a stunning, ground-trembling experience for me. But I realised this man’s achievement could not be mined or imitated in any way, because he had already done it, sewn it up and gone home. What I was left with was the vapours of his talent. I had to make my own kind of art. But wow! The Americans!’, Ed Ruscha

The story of Frank’s journey, the editing and publishing of  The Americans and sample images from the work can be found at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, here.

The Main Event, the Friday Film is here.