Robert Frank

Artists, as they learn and develop, pound in signposts along the way. They’re constantly looking, at art old and new.  And every once in awhile they come across work that really shakes them up. It  re-orders the way they think about what they do. As artists, from that moment, they’re changed. They go forth with new ideas, approaches, and attitudes.

Every artist, of whatever skill or level, can point to the very specific moments when they saw work that really affected them, and their approach. 

For instance, Ansel Adams talked about how just seeing Paul Strand’s negatives uterrly changed his own photography. Yves Tanguy used to say he saw some paintings in a shop window, while sitting on a bus, and he decided, right then,  to become a painter!  Frank Sinatra saw Bing Crosby singing in a movie, and thought, “Hey,  I could do that!” And spent the rest of his life pursuing that idea. 

One quality of art—good art!—is how it changes artists.  

Anyway, as an artist, I can remember every single signpost along the way to where I am now.  And one of the most dramatic signposts, for me, was when I first saw the photographs of Robert Frank.

When I was in middle school, and first getting into photography, it was a bit of a challenge to actually SEE interesting photography. There was no internet. And most of the photography one could see, was in magazines.  A lot of great photography, and great art, was invisible to the average person.

One time, when I was in middle school, and it was a cold hard winter, I got my dad to take me to the county library. They had about 15 books about photography there. Several of these were technical, about how to develop film, and make prints.

Then they had about 8 books that actually showed good photography. Several were by famous Life magazine photographers, and were basically portraits of celebrities, with little anecdotes about meeting them. 

The one book that really knocked me out, and shook me up, was a book of Robert Frank’s photographs. They penetrated me. They were so powerful emotionally. They weren’t funny, or silly. They were intense, and frequently sad and unsettling. I had never seen photographs that went that way, that made that turn down a dark alley. 

Frank portrayed a gritty urban world I did not know growing up in semi rural Macomb county: a world of alienation, anxiety and anomie.  The overall effect of the book was transformative to me, and my approach to photography.

But one photo from the book, still, after nearly fifty years, haunts me. It is one from foggy London town. A street scene, nearly empty, except for a hearse, with its back door conspicuously open, and a little girl, running away from it. Where does one encounter scenes like this, dripping with meaning? And how can one be prepared to recognize and capture such a scene?