There are photo books that can be interesting to readers when browsing through them the first time, then set aside as a forgotten coffee table book, almost pristine after sitting there for years with only the occasional visitor thumbing through the pages. But there is the occasional photo book that stands above many others in the way that it changed the way that photographers looked through their own viewfinders, and the manner in which many Americans saw themselves.
Swiss-born photographer Robert Frank's The Americans is such a book, and one that offered a different look at America when it was first published in 1959. It was not a popular photo book when it was first released; in fact its reception was largely negative. Many rejected the book as being a pessimistic work, any yes, thumbing through this title for the first time, the reader will perhaps find the images portraying fear, aloneness, anger and despair to be quite a negative view of America and the people encountered by photographer Frank. But go a few more pages and it becomes a hard one to put down.
Frank came to the U.S. from Switzerland in 1947, at age 22. Trained in photography, he sharpened his skills working as a commercial photographer, but disliked the work; it was a way to make a living. He spent his off time off wandering the streets of New York City and photographing what he encountered. His noncommercial work began to get noticed, and in 1954, he applied for a Guggenheim fellowship with such legendary photographers as Edward Steichen and Walker Evans writing references.
Robert Frank got the grant. He bought a used Ford and headed out in June 1955 on his American road trip, with his 35mm Leica and other cameras in hand. His first stops were in Pennsylvania and Ohio, then Michigan, where he was permitted to photograph inside the Ford plant in Dearborn. This was just the first part of a car trip that took him about 10,000 miles, and during this photographic journey, Frank shot over 750 rolls of film, which resulted in about 27,000 images. These he edited that down to about 1,000 work prints, and of these he chose just 83 images. It's those photos that we find in this book.
As you go through the pages of this book, you'll find greyscale images of factory workers in Detroit, black passengers on a segregated trolley in New Orleans and transvestites in NYC. You'll encounter a hard-eyed waitress, a Hollywood starlet striking a pose, and a hotel elevator attendant in a contemplative dream, while people in furs and suits blur past her. There are urban cowboys, politicians and socialites, teenagers, bikers, and ordinary people.
On a personal note, my first copy of The Americans was picked up as the result of a college class in photography during the '70s, and it disappeared during some moves over the years. The next was purchased at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2009, and it's the 50th Anniversary Edition, picked up during that memorable exhibition. My copy lists Steidl as the publisher, and all of the images are as sharp and detailed as I remember in my first copy, and maybe even better.
Robert Frank's The Americans is like viewing a time capsule of the 1950s, and the introduction by the late poet Jack Kerouac adds to it. There is an element of sadness, even despair, in some of the images that you'll find as you go through the pages of this book, and there is joy as well. This title is highly recommended to urban historians and those who love the art of street photography alike.
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