I came across this
article on some recently rediscovered commercial photographs by Robert Frank
via Twitter. Frank is not someone I associate with as a jobbing photographer
such is his near mythical standing in photographic history, in fact Kennedy
asserts in his article that his most famous work 'The Americans' (published
just one year after this commission) went on "to change the course of
photography."
The pictures were
collected in a book titled "New York Is" which had the purpose of
promoting the New York Times to potential advertisers. In the article Kennedy
discusses how Frank was finding work hard to come by in the 10 years he had
been in America and with a wife and family to provide for it is likely he was
motivated by pragmatism to put food on the table. He asserts that although many
of the shots are "arrestingly elegant" and typical of commercial work
of the time others "snapped seemingly midstride; decidedly grainier and
blurrier … defined by seas of inky black and oceans of shiny reflective
surfaces – are unmistakably the work of only one man: Robert Frank."
In my view the
images are interesting, but without the knowledge they are by Frank I am unsure
whether they warrant more than a passing look. For me the beauty of 'The
Americans' is that as a book and photo essay the pictures within are more
powerful when viewed as a complete work. The images for "New York Is"
seem more standalone to me. Personally, I seem to gain more each time I look
through 'The Americans' and while these pictures are of note I would not say
they are important. I feel the article is slightly carried away with the
discovery of the pictures and biased because of the association with the New
York Times. (How forward looking they must have been at the time to hire Frank
just before he published his masterpiece and at a time no one else would touch
him!) For me the power of Frank's work is that it is his own personal
uncompromising vision - and the work shown here seems more functional to me.
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