Flying to New York in a couple of weeks. Just found out Robert Frank will be there too. At The Met. We will, alas, miss his lecture; but his show at least will still be up.
“This exhibition celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Americans, Robert Frank’s influential suite of black-and-white photographs made on a cross-country road trip in 1955–56. Although Frank’s depiction of American life was criticized when the book was released in the U.S. in 1959, it soon became recognized as a masterpiece of street photography. Born in Switzerland in 1924, Frank is considered one of the great living masters of photography. The exhibition will feature all 83 images published in The Americans and will be the first time that this body of work is presented to a New York audience. In addition, the exhibition includes contact sheets that Frank used to create the book; earlier photographs made in Europe, Peru, and New York; a short film by the artist on his life; and his later re-use of iconic images from the series.”
And so while I wait for my New York bound plane to take off , I took Amy Stein‘s advice and listened to this interview with Robert Frank and curator of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Photographs (and her thesis advisor), Jeff Rosenheim, on the Leonard Lopate Show.
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“Robert Frank, Swiss, unobtrusive, nice, with that little camera that he raises and snaps with one hand he sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world. To Robert Frank I now give this message: You got eyes.”
Excerpt from The Americans