ROBERT FRANK: VISUAL POET
Photographers around the world revere Robert Frank's contributions to the image pool. Museums of the National and International variety create anthologies, catalogues and booklets attempting to put into perspective the precise importance of Mr. Frank's work. Art galleries and private dealers invest tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in reproducing and reselling the Robert Frank catalogue to new collectors at higher and higher prices each year. Robert Frank's photographs have become iconic, the images are American to the core and yet, he was an outsider, a beatnik, an immigrant, a visual poet. It is almost impossible to define why and what and how the impetus, the formula, the motivation surfaces within an individual artist, but within the example of Mister Robert Frank, it is safe to say that this honest man, with a most basic and unadorned tool in hand, was indeed on a quest for that rare and delectable entity known quite simply, plainly & rather straightforwardly as: The TRUTH.
All Photos © Robert Frank / Courtesy of The Stanford University and The Cantor Arts Center
Mr Robert Frank is Represented by The PACE / MacGILL Gallery In New York City N.Y. USA
Robert Frank travelled the United States in search of America and Americans: he found both. Seeking the truth, leads to knowledge, with knowledge comes responsibility, with responsibility comes wisdom and somewhere within the wisdom, sits some version of truth. What if the truth you find has something in it that is just the slightest bit askew ? What if your parents fled a dictator for a place that was safe and secure and then you were to gamble all that away for a place that spoke of a much larger idea and when you went out to find that idea, it didn't actually exist ? Like many immigrants, like my ancestors and many of your ancestors, we as a people came to discover America and quickly, we realized that America didn't really exist in the way we thought it did. Within that realization also comes a comprehension that although America is not everything we were told, it is now ours and as Americans, we can collectively & individually make a contribution, and in that offering, in that very active step forward into our lives, we make America what it is: You and me. Frank turned his eye on America and took its picture. He did not flinch, he did not turn away, he did not judge, he did not separate, he did not categorize, he did not modify, he did nothing but document, and in that study and within his vignettes, his so-called snap shots, something quite real surfaced, it expounded well beyond the veneer and eventually he found what many of us can only hope to fathom: Mister Robert Frank had simply discovered America & made it his own. He was not the first to, 'discover,' America. Columbus had discovered America in 1492. Washington and his boys followed suit and decided they liked the place more than they did their own homes. Who could blame them ? This place is awesome. The big difference with Robert Frank's discovery is that he did not conquer, nor did he enslave, he just simply captured the image and after all: image is everything. When America actually viewed it's own portrait shortly after World War II and in the decade to follow, it was somewhat shocked at the signs of poverty, the segregation, the somewhat disheveled look. The melting pot of life had seen it's own reflection and turned away, blaming the mirror. The Portrait of America and Americans by Mr. Robert Frank has gone onto have a lasting effect on the populist, the politics, the entire cultural landscape, which in the mid fifties was about to undergo a major shift in values. These images of America immediately influenced an entire generation of writers, artists and activists that had both preceded and coincided with this very new and emerging America. A recent exhibition presented by The Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University unveiled many works from Mr. Frank's famous AMERICANS Series that had never been publicly displayed.
All Photos © Robert Frank / Courtesy of The Stanford University and The Cantor Arts Center
Mr Robert Frank is Represented by The PACE / MacGILL Gallery In New York City N.Y. USA
At seventeen years of age, Frank learns to develop and print photographs with a neighbor who also introduces him to modern art, the apprenticeship lasted a year. At about this same time, fascism and the rise of Hitler's influence in Germany, where his family emigrated from, his father is German, his mother Swiss, effected the young man's perspectives. Frank, who was of Jewish descent, surely knew, growing up in Sweden, that he was different. His parents were both culturally astute, his father could quote Goethe in two languages, his mother created drawings. When a cousin of Frank's came to visit, her parents, who had stayed behind were eventually victims of the holocaust. The memories of Frank's parents recoiling from the sound of Hitler's hatred remained with him forever. In 1942, Robert Frank studied at Wolgensinger studio in Zurich, where he became influenced by the New Photography and an ethic that, in his teacher's own words, "Photography is the representation of reality - its mission is to convey essence, form and atmosphere." Frank learns to light, print and organize his works as well as contact sheet his 2 1/4 negatives. Two years later, he lands a job developing works for the largest photo studio in Switzerland, by day, he prints their work, by night, he prints his own. By 1946 Frank produces an impressive portfolio entitled, simply 40 Fotos. With the end of World War II, he travels to Paris, Milan and Brussels and by 1947, with a rebellious streak of independence and stories of American culture engrained in his psyche by literature and world events, Mr. Frank boards a ship to America. He recalls sitting between a wild, gangster-hatted American who eats with his hands and a Bishop with rosary and red sash: a scene straight out of a movie. Frank briefly worked for Harper's and a year later, he travelled to Peru and Bolivia. By 1949, he was back in Europe traveling to Spain, France, Italy and later that year is published in Camera magazine, with a prophetic declaration, "We believe Robert Frank can teach us how to see …"
All Photos © Robert Frank / Courtesy of The Stanford University and The Cantor Arts Center
Mr Robert Frank is Represented by The PACE / MacGILL Gallery In New York City N.Y. USA
Robert Frank travelled between Europe and America several times in the early nineteen fifties. He married, had a child, applied for and received a Guggenheim grant & drove across the United States documenting a very real America. He had already captured iconic images in England, Scotland, Peru and Spain, including top hatted Londoners, coal miners in Whales, workers in LaPaz, bullfighters in Barcelona. He was now in search of the American image, outside of the big cities, rural America. It is fitting that the author of, "On The Road," Jack Kerouac and Robert Frank would eventually collaborate on a film. Kerouac also wrote the preface to Frank's seminal mid fifties survey work that was eventually published in 1958, entitled simply, "The Americans." Mr. Franks entry into America in 1947 and his many travels coincided exactly with author Kerouac's own pursuit and invention of a New Prose language in America. It was the perfect alignment. Frank's search for the truth in images, his abhorrence of commercial situations, where he quickly realized that, "There was no spirit there … the only thing that mattered was to make money," was in total unison with the emerging beatnik movement. Which eventually led to the cultural revolution and a new generation of values that included women's rights, civil rights and alternative lifestyles. Frank was also very much in line with the new school of painting that had taken hold by the likes of New York action painter Jackson Pollock, who had graced the cover of time in 1947, the year Frank first arrived in America. He states, regarding the new found style, after a conscious exodus from his New York commercial assignments, "I was very free with the camera. I didn't think of what would be the correct thing to do. I did what I felt like doing. I was like an action painter… I was making a kind of diary."
The tools Frank selects become even simpler when he begins using a point and shoot 35mm Leica, suggested by his boss and mentor at Harper's Bazaar, Alexey Brodovitch, rather than his 2 1/4 inch box camera. It is very possible that Robert Frank was one of the few modern photographers to be fully conscious of his intuition, utilizing a philosophy of following one's heart as opposed to one's mind. The 35mm camera made this very particular and personal transition that much easier. Frank was also very aware of the myths that had surrounded photography since World War II, with the adventurous roving journalist tradition of photographers such as Robert Capa, who later co-founded Magnum Photo Agency, the first agency to be run by and for photographers. There were times in Frank's early career when lack of sales and rejection from the large magazine publications only fueled his motivation. He strived to break free of the style, story concept and basic mainstream presentation of imagery that pervaded the publishing industry: the beginning, middle & end formulas that LIFE magazine so heartily represented. Frank began to present his layouts and book design works without many words or narration and juxtaposing images such as Christ on the cross with a Ballon at a parade, titled : Men of Wood & Men of Air. Though, even more effective and minimalist are images presented with no text at all and no image juxtaposed, simply an image on one page and a blank page next to it. In this way, Robert Frank elevated the conversation by allowing the viewer to do some thinking, to read the symbols, to project themselves into the image and decide for themselves what was going on. By doing so, he also added a much needed element that had been missing from the photography of the nineteen fifties, Mr. Frank brought back a sense of curiosity to photography and in doing so, he created a new visual poetry with various meanings to each viewer.
All Photos © Robert Frank / Courtesy of The Stanford University and The Cantor Arts Center
Mr Robert Frank is Represented by The PACE / MacGILL Gallery In New York City N.Y. USA
No Less than ten minutes into the documentary entitled, "Leaving Home, Coming Home: A Portrait of Robert Frank," Mr. Frank rejects the films process, unveiling a glimpse into his very true character as a kind of idiosyncratic jazz purist. Up to this point in the film, the filmmaker's have decided to do a, 'connect the dots' biographical take, asking Mr. Frank to discuss and recall all the known biographical facts that have been so well explored before in books and catalogues, such as the very detailed essays by Sarah Greenough of The National Gallery of Art in Washington D. C. where much of Frank's photographic work resides for future study. These biographical essays can also be found in the very extensive book entitled, "ROBERT FRANK Moving Out" on Scalo Press. In the middle of a question and answer session, Mr. Frank is asked to repeat an earlier observation, because the film crew had actually run out of film. He responds with a fiery exchange: "Well, look, forget it. Look, I'm not an actor, you know. I can't go through this shit, you know. I mean… theres no spontaneity in this, it's completely against my nature what's happening here. So, if the crew can't get it together with the film, let's go out to Coney Island, lets play a Beckett play there and lets look at the landscape with my photographs and see that this man is looking for something he did fifty years ago." In the next shot of the film, Mr Frank is seen on the street in Coney Island asking a cop on a horse, "Sir, do you know where this is ? I took this picture almost fifty years ago," The cop answers, "No, I don't know." Mr Frank turns to the camera in response, "Let's find a real old guy, he would know." Suddenly we get some authenticity and a peek into what it Is that Robert Frank does so well: He connects with real people. Eventually, a young african american man points out the location, "It was right there," he points across the way, "So then, you knew it as a kid ?" Frank asks and the young man answers, "Yeah." There is a very heart felt parting glance, Franks says, "Thanks a lot." Then, suddenly, the young man reaches out his hand and Mr. Frank grabs the young man's wrist, their eyes meet and they relate. It's a small, yet beautiful moment where two strangers have connected. We get the sense that
Mr Robert Frank is Represented by The PACE / MacGILL Gallery In New York City N.Y. USA
Mr. Frank's pictures, his early and entire catalogue were also indeed created with this special human need, for a man, alone with his art and his ideas, to connect with his people, with his immediate surroundings and with the world at large. At another point in the documentary, Mr Frank is riding a bus, looking out the window, recalling an earlier series of works taken from the windows of moving buses. He looks out the window quietly reminiscing in a solitary manner. As an admirer of Mr. Frank and his work, to watch him with no camera in his hands, was literally, for me, quite painful. When a human being you love turns ninety years of age, as Mr. Frank currently has, it is high time to celebrate his life, his work, his experiences. It is also time to ensure that this human being has everything he needs, that he knows how very well loved, well respected and well deserving he is of life's gifts. When both of my Grandfather's had turned ninety, I dropped everything I was doing and focused on them, we made documentary films together, we created images, we conducted interviews, we ate together, we discussed their lives, we set the story straight. Now, both of those men no longer walk the earth, they have moved on to another world. As I look at Robert Frank's world of images, as I look at Robert Frank's life, as I look at Robert Frank's experience at my own 'middle age', I get invigorated, I get inspired, I get turned on to life again and a new phase of creating begins. The power of the Individual is awe inspiring. Very few singular Artists, Writers or Filmmakers have set the bar to a new standard in the way in which Mr. Robert Frank has done. He is stubbornly passionate, defiantly individualistic, decidedly authentic, unabashedly truthful, culturally curious and it is very safe to say that Mr. Robert Frank did not sell out. He influenced and continues to influence The Arts, Advertising, Musicians, Writers, Filmmakers and of course photography, every single decade since his first appearing on theses shores. He is a living legend and most likely, he would shun that appraisal. Which is neither here nor there, the fact is, he did his job, the images remain, end of story.
All Photos © Robert Frank / Courtesy of The Stanford University and The Cantor Arts Center
Mr Robert Frank is Represented by The PACE / MacGILL Gallery In New York City N.Y. USA
ROBERT FRANK
VISUAL POET : In His Words
ON PHOTOGRAPHS: "I like images and so to make images became kind of natural."
ON PARIS: "I never really had a concept for something. It was really the intuition before I really saw it. So, Paris was very good for me.
ON LONDON: "It was wonderful, because, they didn't pay any attention to you. Which, today, they would tell you to fuck off or turn away, you know."
ON NEW YORK CITY: "New York is a very good city, wherever you look around, it has a character. and you know, It isn't a pretty life, it isn't a sweet life, it's, it's the real life, that I looked for, and that I got.
ON AMERICA: "In America I wanted to do it differently. There was no more romanticism really, a look at a country that I didn't really know, I had only been here a couple of years. The Americans was the first time I made a trip across the country… I really felt something very strong from the people. I looked at poor people, how they tried to survive, what a lonely time it can be in America, what at a tough country it is."
ON EARLY INFLUENCES: "You grow up in a place and the culture of that place or your parents or your situation, it influences you. There was a war going on, Switzerland was a place that was closed off from everywhere, you couldn't get out and you were afraid that the nazi's would invade … so of course, it had an influence on a jew."
ON RACE RELATIONS: "Also, I saw for the first time the way blacks were treated, it was surprising to me, but it didn't make me hate America, it made me understand how people can be. You know, you learn a lot traveling and you learn a lot when you are a photographer and thats what probably what makes the difference, if you have some brain and some feeling for people, you are going to be a good photographer."
ON PERCEPTION OF HIS IMAGES: "The reaction surprised me, because people thought it was an anti-American story, so then, it took ten years till that changed, but I do like America, so I became an American and thats what I know best."
ON CREATING PICTURES : "The Pictures have to talk, not me, and so be it."
All Photos © Robert Frank / Courtesy of The Stanford University and The Cantor Arts Center
Mr Robert Frank is Represented by The PACE / MacGILL Gallery In New York City N.Y. USA
Mr Robert Frank's Images are Archived in The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. USA
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