A scathing indictment of American society. Bravo!
9
Always thought his photos were more voyeuristic of what humans don't like to show. To say he captured Americans candidly, I don't think so. Looking bored, showing American apartheid in its awfulness, his photos show an ennui, an alienation of the human spirit. How American is that now?
Lack of compassion is really what his photos are about.
9
@JustMe2 ...I can't believe you are living in the present moment -- could Americans in the age of DJT be more alienated than we are now? How American is that? A lot!
39
Frank ungenerously winnowed his book down to the darker, more narrow side. That's OK if it's his viewpoint as a foreigner. But by calling it The Americans, he claimed it as the only view of America, which is false.
9
"What's in a name?" we may ask, but the answer is often "quite a lot." When I saw that a "Robert Frank" who'd devoted his career to showing the underbelly of American capitalism, I immediately thought of the Corrnell economist who authored such critiques as "The Winner Take All Society" and "The Darwin Economy" and "Success and Luck: The Myth of American Meritocracy." While I'm sad that the photographer had to leave us, I'm glad it was after a full life and such an important career of such longevity. And I'm also glad the economist Robert Frank is still with us.
Both Robert Franks, in different media, have devoted their careers to conveying almost the same message: when we make a god of capitalism and commerce, we nullify the humanity of those made in G-d's image. They took it upon themselves to restore that humanity through images and scholarship exposing the downside of our gospel of wealth and greed that in the end gets its only moral bearings from Darwin.
"Robert" etymologically means "bright fame" and "Frank" means both "freedom" and "honesty/truth."
Both Robert Franks bring the light of truth to a too often distorted, willfully obscured culture. We shall miss the one and continue to appreciate the other's ongoing contributions in the cause they shared.
32
Corrected:
"What's in a name?" we may ask, but the answer is "often, quite a lot." When I saw that a "Robert Frank" who'd devoted his career to showing the underbelly of American capitalism, had died, I -worried- immediately thought of the Cornell economist who authored such critiques as "The Winner Take All Society" and "The Darwin Economy" and "Success and Luck: The Myth of American Meritocracy." While I'm sad that the photographer had to leave us, I'm glad it was after a full life and such an important career of such longevity. And I'm also glad the economist Robert Frank is still with us.
Both Robert Franks, in different media, have devoted their careers to conveying almost the same message: when we make a god of capitalism and commerce, we nullify the humanity of those made in G-d's image. They took it upon themselves to restore that humanity through images and scholarship exposing the downside of our gospel of wealth and greed that in the end gets its only moral bearings from Darwin.
"Robert" etymologically means "bright fame" and "Frank" means both "freedom" and "honesty/truth."
Both Robert Franks bring the light of truth to a too often distorted, willfully obscured culture. We shall miss the one and continue to appreciate the other's ongoing contributions in the cause they shared.
3
Robert Frank looked at America through his resolute lens and exposed the many facets of its people and geography and everyday life with his spirit of curiosity and commitment to his art. The images are a magnificent record of that notable journey. In his travels and through his work, he showed us who we are.
9
death transfigures. incredible amounts of accolades are heaped on Robert Frank, the great photographer with "The Americans" as one of the greatest photo books ever. And everything is called "art." If you believe it. In order to show alienation Frank estranged the subjects from us, the viewers. Out of focus, often bodies without heads; dynamic action in the images of no distinction. He gave slices of un-life. Most of the time he went for dissociation, sadness, anguish. He exhibited onesideness. His pictures, often manipulated also in the printing, are disturbing. Disturbing realities. But there's more than the disturbing, more than hopelessness.
6
I have been looking at Frank's images now for nearly thirty five years. His work was enigmatic, raw, strange, foreign and intensely alluring. Like Kerouac's words, Frank brought you into a world you weren't sure you should be in, but that you never wanted to leave. he showed a vicious yet strangely beautiful america in his early images. More than that, if you followed Frank through the tragedy of his two children dying, you saw an artist arise who struggled to deal with the pain of separation, who took solace in the wid-swept cliffs of Nova Scotia, an artist who was always a refugee, who was always already displaced.
Interestingly, the person who first took me through Frank's work was Phillip Gefter, author of this obit. I was a young photographer in his class at the San Francisco Art Institute. Phillip was there briefly, and demanded always more than we could give. Thank you, Phillip, again, for guiding us, and for staying with the possibility of vision.
24
With the glut of images available on screens large and small, + (fake) Photoshop...
i am exhausted.
What was the cause of death ?
@LPP Lets see ;94 years old.
10
Simply put, there could only be one Robert Frank. Every one I know learned from him.
10
I held the door for Robert Frank as he walked out of K&M Camera one day in the early 90s. It's my greatest achievement as an artist to date.
63
At the time of his death, Robert Frank was the greatest living photographer in this or any country.
I met Frank briefly in the mid 1980s when he appeared at the American Film Institute to introduce a showing of his documentary about the Rolling Stones - which under court order could only be screened when Frank was at the theater in person to introduce the film. He was so young then!
Robert Frank suffered a lot of personal tragedy in his life and remarkably turned his family loss and devastation into some of the most remarkable photographs and movies in the history of the medium. I recommend "Sick of Goodbyes" and his film about the death of his daughter Andrea and the illness of his son "Life Dances On." Frank was too little known of his great films.
Frank possessed incredible personal courage.
Robert Frank - in my view, the greatest photographer of all time.
R.I.P.
65
@fast/furiousthanks for your share. Tragedies involving ones children, the worst. So much respect for him. So hard to reflect on that pain and make art with it. Familiar to me. Ridiculous genius.
11
@fast/furious
His documentary on the Rolling Stones "Cocksucker Blues" is available on youtube, albeit in degraded form.
Well worth seeing.
8
HERO
1
Though The Americans is Frank’s seminal work, a number of my favorite photos of his preceded those photos. Perhaps my favorite – and it’s really hard to narrow down to a single favorite – is Horse and Sun/Peru, 1948. It closes out the Steidl version of Peru I have at home. It’s reminded me of film stills from old spaghetti westerns, but was taken almost twenty years before they first appeared in cinema. The photo also seems full of empathy and optimism shot straight into the sun. He was 24 when he shot that image. Twenty four! Simply stunning.
https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.78764.html
6
I'm sorry June. Be strong.
2
I firmly believe it is unfair - and grossly inaccurate - to refer to this hugely important artist as a "documentarian" and especially inappropriate in the headline of his obituary, which is otherwise thorough as well as comprehensive, Mr. Frank's work is - to a rather large extent - what we usually refer to as "personal" [for what that may be worth]. In effect, we would do such artists - and posterity - a grand service by referring simply to their life lived and art produced. Period. Full stop, Honi soit qui mal y pense. Ed Singer Montréal, Canada
8
Since "The Americans" so altered the photographic landscape, has there been a young photographer of human reality who has not, at least once, not wanted to be "the next Robert Frank?"
3
Robert Frank, Cartier Bresson, Jacob Riis, Dorothea Lange, etc. It's in the eye before the shutter clicks.
14
They're wonderful photos, but there's a lot of pretentious talk about what about he did (including from him). The country reveals itself in his pictures, but aside from some elementary aesthetic and technical competence (eg. use of framing and depth of field), and some pretty straightforward ideas about what he was and was not interested in, his accomplishment lay in being there to record it.
Long ago my best friend, now deceased, went looking for Frank's house, found it, knocked and was invited in for a visit. One of my writer friend's most prized possessions was the Frank book signed by the author. Both men were exceptional artists. RIP.
9
His photos didn't include all Americans. The book should have been called Some Americans or Americans I've Met, not The Americans.
2
@Alan Klein You take the title of his book too literally Alan. It wouldn’t have been possible (obviously) to take a picture of every single American! As it was, he took approximately 27,000 photos (and that’s a lot) and still had to winnow that down to 83.
Nevertheless, the title is appropriate because the photos represented an adequate cross-section of our population and, still more to the point, they were an unvarnished look at the country as it was rather than some Ozzie and Harriet-like sweeping under the rug of our American reality.
18
@Alan Klein
Well... that's brilliant, absolutely brilliant!
1
@Alan Klein That is about the most ungenerous statement I've heard in a long time. Have you looked at his photographs, allowed yourself to travel with him? What sort of a world would we live in if everything must be taken at literal value, with no room for poetry?
14
America seemed pretty grim back then, at least in his photos.
@Finever Well, Walt Disney’s version of America “back then” wasn’t grim at all. But, unfortunately, Disney’s version was an utter falsification of the actual country.
12
Loved his work changed photography completely
6
I have Walker Evans’ photograph of the front door of Robert Frank’s Nova Scotia home. It hangs near my bedroom door and makes me think of him every day I pass it, more so even today.
18
This is the end of the heroic epoch of black-and-white photography on film as the short-lived medium that documented (as we used to say) something once called humanity. Almost every silent still image of Frank radiates the unquiet devastation of that time. The greater, more overwhelming destitutions of the now continue apace. Its poets are, necessarily, more steeped in the perfection of technique Frank so steadfastly refused. Atget, Sander, Bourke-White, Mieth, Evans and the other FSA photographers, Strand, Alvárez Bravo, the Avedon of "In the American West" -- it's an archive now. This archive remains visible and readable (which two are not the same), but it can no longer be written in, except as quotation, which lends itself to kitsch. The great work of the now -- Goldin, Mann, Polidori, Wall, Iturbide, Struth, and others -- is different. For one thing, the poets of the now must work harder against the ubiquity of the destruction (and its pixilated glut, which consigns all into the invisibility of numbness from the shock of its being all too much) of the world as Frank and few others once eyed it. The now of the Beatles' ecstatic love song, "It's All Too Much," is become unending trauma and PTSD. Frank remains as part of the monumental horizon of possibility against which the now takes shape, in its monstrosity. Brecht: "There are those who fight their whole lives long. They are the unforgettable ones." Robert Frank: May his name be praised!
13
clear new eyes all through life.
photographs that spoke on multiple levels.
held the states at arms length.
all dearly good.
1
Photographers are not "artists." Photography is an important method to record images, but elevating it to "art" belittles the efforts of sculptors, painters, dancers, singers, writers and poets.
1
@Qxt63 Oh, please. A person who can tame the light, perfect the composition, and frame the subject with the most critical eye is not an artist? Robert Frank was an artist, as were all the other greats such as Matthew Brady, Margaret Bourke-White, Walker Evans and countless other photographers who had a passion for this field.
34
@Qxt63
Disagree completely. It is an art and Frank definitely embodied its best contributions. Additionally, many painters were influenced by photography (Degas for example).
16
@Qxt63 - seriously? Belittles? - I am proud to call photography my (visual) art. My intent is to make art using photography as my medium. Robert Frank was a great artist. He left a legacy. I hope that others will enjoy and respect his art.
13
Like many touched by his work, the first time I saw the photographs in The Americans was a moving experience. I knew nothing about Robert Frank until then, but the feelings elicited in me by his photographs were so strong and unforgettable.
5
Robert Frank was an artist whose oeuvre represented the image as both a question and an answer, a way of seeing and a way of understanding. He will be missed, but not forgotten.
8
The significance of Robert Frank's photography is indisputable, with "The Americans" containing much of the most significant American photography of the postwar period, but a few of his films are also masterpieces. On a side note, the documentary "Don't Blink, Robert Frank", directed by Laura Israel (his editor of over 20 years), is worth tracking down.
12
Brilliant and no photoshop, apps to make these images. No Apple iPhone. Images that can stir emotions.
11
You don't expensive equipment to take great photographs.
10
The you tube link to Pull My Daisy leads to an unavailable video. This article is otherwise a well worth read.
@Linda Vi Vona . This one (with Italian subtitles) works: https://youtu.be/_12rctV5Z84
1
My only brush with Robert Frank was at screening of (a) "Pull My Daisy" and (b) his Stones film, "Cocksucker Blues". Quite the double feature! As I recall, the Stones stipulated that he could only screen the movie four times a year and he had to be physically present. He gave a wonderfully articulate intro to both films, and it was a real shame they were not released more widely. Ironic that the bad boy Rolling Stones could suddenly become so prudish....
9
@Craig Doyle It’s not that the Stones were prudish. It’s that, though they were great rockers, they were also marketing a product (themselves) and had to keep their businessmen collaborators on board. The “street fighting man” was just an image (not to be taken seriously) and their transgressions strictly personal, never political.
2
Just a brilliant, brilliant artist.
14
Thanks for opening my eyes to this genius.
8
I was fortunate enough to see a major exhibition of Mr. Frank's photographs, and to watch his film, Cocksucker Blues, at the University of Santa Cruz in the 1970's. His documentary of the Rolling Stones remains my favorite documentary of the rock and roll era. Given that exhibition was prohibited except when Mr. Frank was in attendance, how will anyone now see this film?
10
@Prazan It is available online, for those who know where and how to search for such things.
Robert Frank was immigrant who loved his new country and honored it with the most important work of photographic art ever to show this country as it really is, stripped of glamour, stripped of commercial intent, stripped of gaudy hype. His photographs included all people as this country is a country of all people. He knew that and showed us the USA in it's grittiest, grainiest glory. He showed us what is really beneath those spacious skies. Thank you Robert Frank! Travel well.
10
The Importance of Being Frank.
R.I.P. to a master of his art.
15
Robert Frank is why I have had a camera with me at all times since I was 14 years old.
18
@PaulaC. There is not a better accolade than that!
7
Robert Frank was a major influence on me while studying photography at the San Francisco Art Institute in the early seventies. That influence persists in my work today. A giant whose impact will be felt for a long time.
9
(Graduated SFAI 06’ )still as an important photographer as ever.
I lived above him in TriBeCa around 1980. He was nice but he kept to himself. Then he moved. But the fancy invitations to Mary Boone and other events piled up at the mailbox. We went to a couple on Robert.
17
Years ago, in this newspaper, I read the suggestion that Robert Frank was the last person to see something new through the camera finder. Thinking about that everytime I peer through an eyepiece or frame a scene nudges me just that right amount.
16
My book "The People's Champions" (its newest edition is Vol. 80 of my "Spirit of America" book-series) covers my view of the 15 most masterful documentary photographers of the 20th century; Robert Frank is included among those 15. RF was a superb analyst of everyday life wherever he went w/his camera, & evocative when you least expected it, as in "Butte, Montana" or "Charleston, South Carolina". Mainly, his work was provocative (as in "Trolley--New Orleans") & intriguing (as in "City of London" & "Parade--Hoboken, New Jersey"). He wasn't content w/his early life, so he worked to better his start. It appears his 2 children had no children of their own; that's sad in a way; but I'd guess RF made up for many things with the tenacity & talent of his vision. His prevalent influence on many documentary photographers will continue. Let's hope we are good enough to warrant decent comparison with the 15 in my book. Many of my books, incl. all my SA volumes' pdf's thusfar can be viewed/read at: libraryguides.missouri.edu/davidmarcou --
3
The last line is the most important line in the story.
11
Frank, says the author, caught the eye of Alexey Brodovitch — who already had introduced the expressive potential of “cinematic, immediate, off-kilter and grainy” photography in his under-appreciated 1945 book ‘Ballet.' And it's hard to imagine Frank was unaware of William Klein's raucous 1956 “Life Is Good & Good For You In New York,” which also bent the technique of photography to its limits in pursuit of personal vision. I'm not dissing Frank, but “The Americans” was very much a work of its time rather than a risky artistic departure; I'm not sure Frank would have an avant-garde reputation at all if he hadn't been fortunate to fall in with the right set of beatnik friends.
2
@JL Williams No artist, however great, arrives ex nihilo. This is also true in other fields. Newton would never have arrived at his conclusions without the preceding discoveries of Copernicus and (especially) Galileo. “If I have been able to see so far, it’s because I have stood on the shoulders of giants”.
More to the point, if Frank continues to move us now (as he did me when “The Americans” came to the SF MOMA), trust me, it’s not because of his “beatnik friends”.
5
Hadn't heard of "The Americans," but it is quite the haunting book--especially poignant and real with todays tumultuous times. Robert Frank was an artist--we need more, not less, of them. You are missed.
8
Great photographs are electrifying, catching a moment we could all have seen, but revealing it to us in a way that we may have missed, They have a universal quality that draws us into stories about the world.
Robert Frank's photographs showed us an America we knew and recognized. They were about people who seem as immediate and in the moment as they were when he took the pictures—they are in American settings that are familiar, but they speak of people everywhere.
The eye of an artist can capture a time and a place in a way that includes us in that moment, and Robert Frank was a master of seeing, knowing how to frame the moment instinctively, and draw us into stories that we can only guess at.
Vivien Maier had that talent as well, and perhaps it takes a foreign sensibility to help us appreciate and understand who we are. I love exploring those moments and wondering about them, and their photographs are a gift to everyone who looks at them through their eyes.
14
He was brilliant in showing Americans what we looked like and what our country looked like. Always an inspiration to me and millions of others who call ourselves photographers.
4
Fine writing by Philip Gefter. Yes, Frank was one of those who not only revealed what an art form could do, he encouraged you to explore. He, as well as Arbus, Cartier-Bresson, Evans, Dorothea Lange and of course others, encouraged us to look, but then, to look again.
8
When Robert Frank’s “The Americans” was published in 1959, I was a 19-year-old photographer aspiring to be a photojournalist in Washington, D.C. Looking at his pictures opened my mind.
Frank’s images struck a drum roll, tearing up the notion of a forever safe and prosperous America. The Sixties—that decade of change–followed, challenging us all to re-evaluate. My Leica became my navigational tool, and in my more than 40-year career as a photographer, I like to think that I’ve followed Frank’s example, making inquiring pictures that honor the inspiration I found in “The Americans.” Thank you, Robert Frank.
27
He was a master. Period.
15
The great Robert Frank.
Another from the time before tech. 'advances' & marketing drowned photography in meaninglessness, while hipshooting people is now considered an offense. Walker Evans, Frank, Brandt, Friedlander, Winogrand: like the jazz of the times. But don't give up, kids!
10
To call Robert Frank pivotal is both wholly accurate and at the same time a gross understatement. When comes such another?
donald barnat
los angeles
7
Frank was threatened by an Arkansas state trooper, and briefly jailed while photographing "The Americans":
https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2015/07/05/photographer-recounts-formative-experience-in-arkansas
9
@misha
Thanks for this anecdote.
1
The documentary about the Rolling Stones is "Cocksucker Blues" there I said it. Great film, great title. Robert Frank will haunt every darkroom now along with Atget and the others...
16
@Jt
Unfortunately, very few will ever see this masterpiece. I saw it at the first of only two screenings in Venice, Ca when it first came out. It can be found on the net but it's difficult and not too clear. It's the a very real and candid depiction of the the Stones on the road across America in 1972 through the eyes of Robert Frank, which makes it quite fascinating. There are a few clips in "Crossfire Hurricane": one I remember
of Mick taking a toot from a roadie with a stiletto as he leaves the dressing room to go onstage.
Deep sadness
Endless respect
11
Thank you, Robert Frank.
10
He took photographs, not PR pictures. RIP Robert Frank.
10
Well actually, he also took PR pictures - for the New York Times among others, and he took fashion photos. It’s what photographers, even legendary ones, such as Robert Frank, have to do in order to eat.
4
What a life he had. Also, he is (obviously) a terrific artist. His photos are truly stunning.
4
Such a great photographer. He didn't prettify things, didn't show us America through rose-colored glasses. Just the unvarnished truth. Some "ugly beauty" as Thelonious Monk would put it, and some just plain "this is what's going on" stuff.
17
He was a master of evoking the absent people in empty rooms.
Goodbye to one of the greats. The empty room of the 21st century will miss you terribly.
10
I was lucky enough to see Cocksucker Blues in the late 1990's in the Castro Theater in San Francisco with Mr Frank present as required by court order. Thank you sir for the work you left behind and safe journeys to the next realm.
11
@aimlowjoe I think it's up on youtube (bought a bootleg VHS in the early 2000's). Filled with the sapping tedium of lives lived in hotel tours, waiting for the next gig, and staged decadence (naked groupies on planes, tvs dropped from balconies), but some moments of euphoria (Stevie Wonder and Mick sharing a mic on Satisfaction).
2
One by one, the greats of photojournalism have died. Their era is gone. The smartphone has seen to that.
12
@Angiographer, there are many great photographers still working, still living, still creating fabulous work. Many were inspired by Frank. If you can't find them, start with Magnum Photos (https://www.magnumphotos.com/) and VII Agency (http://viiphoto.com/) among others. Seek, and you shall find.
1
I had never heard of this person. I am gobsmacked.
Thank you.
7
@August West, run, don't walk, to the library and pick up a copy of The Americans. You will not be disappointed.
Meantime, check out this recent NYT article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/05/magazine/robert-franks-america.html
1
In Robert Franks words: "The Eye should learn to listen, before it looks", ... nothing more to say. He was able to open peoples eyes, if they listen to his photographes. Then and today.
9
The Americans has sat on the table in front of our most comfortable couch for decades. He will be missed but his eyes live on.
3
"... my sympathies were with people who struggled. There was also my mistrust of people who made the rules.”
A mensch. Z"L
15
His truth shone through before we all became blinded within the bubble of a Internet haze. Ours is a world of constant distraction.
Maybe someday something will cut through it, but for now it's a fog, a visual, aural, cacophony that rattles on and on and on. Maybe we'll get it, the simple way to deal with it. Maybe we won't.
All you need to do when you get weary of the endlessness of it is simply to turn it off.
"Click."
John~
American Net'Zen
3
The ground just shook under my feet.
2
Thank you for the inspiration, Robert Frank.
1
One only wishes that mere mortals like us could see the world the way Robert Frank did.
2
When I was twenty, "on the road" hitch-hiking around North America in the mid 70's, Robert and June kindly took me in to stay in a back cabin behind their farm house in Mabou. I helped him sheet-rock & remodel the upstairs, and house-sat (and fed Sport) while they went away to NYC for a couple months. He was a very sweet, deep and perceptive guy, with a fantastic sense of humor. A rare combination. It all shows in his photographs. Well named, Mr. Frank. RIP, you are missed.
82
Robert Frank was a true genius, about as good as it gets. But it's somewhat disconcerting to read that Mr. MacGill believed that he would be more remembered for his rarely seen and rather mediocre films than his photos, which continued at the highest level of pure poetry long after "The Americans."
3
Mr. Frank is truly a great artist who used a camera as if it were a pen. Light was his ink, and film was his paper. His images were never missed-spelled.
Thank you Robert Frank!
5
I've admired much of Robert Frank.
And I really like the opening portrait in this article:
- a great photographer holding a cheap point-and-shoot
- confidence that it is about the indian, not about the arrow.
7
@RoelHendrickx
Yeah – I agree and thought similarly about that opening portrait...
Robert Frank was a giant. His "The Americans" changed both what we see and how we see it. To look through it today is to be reminded that photography's unique power is not just to capture moments in time, but to draw us into those moments, to ask questions about the places and the people, and in answering those questions to find meanings extending far beyond the frame. His "Trolley -- New Orleans" from 1955, for example, tells us so much about life in that place and time.
Like many other photographers, it was through Mr. Frank's work that I began to understand what street photography was all about and therefore to appreciate it better. Mr. Frank's work demonstrates the power of black and white photography, a reminder necessary in an era of over-saturated, hyper-processed images whose purpose seems more computational than photographic.
Thank you, Mr. Frank, and may you rest in peace.
15
"The Americans" taught me how to see differently; the dialogue between the images, one linking to the next through the use of light, was powerful. It also narrated the linkages among us, all different Americans, as well as the breaks between us. My heart is filled with sorrow that we lost him, and gratitude for his life.
7
One of the most influential photographers of our century. Like Smith and Bresson, Capa made a huge impact on me in my younger years as I struggled to be a photo journalist.
2
My wife, an artistical photographer, has made three books around Robert Frank figure. They are about the journey of her dream to meet Robert Frank. It was literally a journey, since we live 15.000 km away. She finally met him a couple of year ago at his place in NYC. An amazing figure, a colossus photographer.
8
He certainly involved himself with the poor, downtrodden, the vulnerable - and exploited them for his photo "art" and his very skeptical view of America. Even 1950s America is more than that. There's a streak of unkindness in him. Certainly not a very compassionate camera-eye. What he said about the once admired Henri Cartier-Bresson is unkind. There so many ways of looking and photographing the world, humanity.
Still, I appreciated the shocks I received from looking at Robert Frank's pictures, his intensity, authenticity, confrontational style. Made you think . . .
4
@bu
Great artists are not kind with their subject(s). They don't work for the Salvation Army.
3
@Lea
And they are often dismissive of the "competition."
@Lea
In what way were Walker Evans, Russel Lee or Dorothea Lange "not kind with their subjects"?
They were "great artists''. No?
3
"The Americans" is one of those few books that you read and you're never the same. Robert Frank was an artist, someone who challenged his audience again and again. His work underscores the statement that all truly original work appears strange or ugly at first. There is little to no referent for it.
Whenever I see one of his photos, I see something new. Despite the informality of his shots, when I viewed his retrospective at the Met, I was struck by the tremendous skill and effort that went into burning and dodging his prints -- a level of craft I hadn't noted before.
Robert Frank was one of my heroes. There aren't many left. As a friend said, "It feels like the people who've defined our lives, in their absence, are casting a long shadow across our ability to discern the future of our world..."
8
There is photo documentary need for both the raw, the God-honest truth that are Frank's captures, as well as the Sunday-go-to-meeting images of Life and Look, those that we hope to be.
6
One of the first books I purchased after moving to America over a decade ago. Raw, inspiring, humanistic and simply wonderful to look at. R.I.P.
8
As a young aspiring photographer I idolized his images. I remember spending $125 on a monograph of his work as an 18 year old and my friends thought I was crazy. His work continued to evolve over the course of his career and in my opinion got more and more interesting. May he rest in peace.
13
Oh my. How I love looking into these wonderful, beautifully made, human pictures. Looking at every detail makes my heart stop just a little.
10
Do you see what I see? One of the most difficult mediums of expression. Elusive mastery. So very rare indeed. Thank you Mr. Frank. We did see what you see.
17
I count myself fortunate to have seen Frank's Rolling Stones documentary, "Cocksucker Blues" in Houston in the mid-1980s. The documentary was shown at one of the museums in Houston (the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, I believe), and was followed by Frank giving a presentation and talking about his work. "I shot first and paid the consequences later" has stuck with me ever since I heard him say it about one of his images.
Rest easy, and thank you.
22
Ah, sorry to hear this. A great age and what a legacy. A gentleman too, and much cared for by his community around the East Village who kept a benevolent eye over him.
13
His “Trolly— New Orleans” photograph is so perfect in composition, framing, exposure, background and reflections, that if it were taken now I would suspect some heavy digital enhancement and fakery. That’s why I so enjoy emulsion prints taken directly from negatives, much more than I do the too-perfect digital images that are everywhere these days. Sure, you can fudge a lot in the darkroom, correcting exposure problems with dodging and burning in. But a print from a negative is a true image of a moment in time. I don’t trust digital photography to be that.
33
@Passion for Peaches That is a brilliant photograph. I'm surprised he rejected Cartier-Bresson, who shares so many qualities with him. But maybe artists have to kill their fathers, so to speak.
2
Pushing a button to create an image is not greatness. Photographers are not great artists, they are great sometimes as social commenters.
You can't just be clever, dedicated, insightful, and courageous with a button, but you can destroy the Earth with a button. A lot of my classmates from art school who never could learn to draw got into photography.
Sure glad Vincent didn't have a camera.
@John michel
Pushing a button may not be greatness. Knowing when to push it definitely is.
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@john michel Who says being a photographer or a painter must be mutually exclusive? Many artists successfully do both. Sounds like you aren’t one of them.
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@john michel Of course, one would really have to go all the way back to "what is an artist?" and then further, "what is art?" to really respond to such blanket statements. Vincent was very interested in photography. He labored to make a painting "smell like raw earth". Both a painting and a photo are, on one hand, an attempt to show a viewer what a person sees. Better yet, what a person feels. Better yet, an inquiry of what the viewer feels. Yes, a button is pushed, that seems easy enough. When a person plays a piano one can push down a key and a sound emits. So why is it that one person pushes a key and one is struck with emotion while another pushes the same key and you feel nothing? Can a person really make you feel something by how they push a key on a piano, of course they can. A great artist can make you feel with one note. I great photographer can make you feel with one push of a button. Of course you know that photographers conceptualize, agonize even, over what to look for, how to find it, how to frame it, when to shoot it, how to capture the sentiment, how to develop it, how to show it, etc etc. Those are a lot of artistic decisions don't you think? It seems that photography doesn't move you, fair enough. But you can be clever with a button, surely. There are innumerable buttons in society that react to a creative hand, a shutter only being one of them. Vincent may have found that it is more difficult to express oneself with a camera than paint...
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There's a wonderful documentary about Robert Frank called Don't Blink which can be gotten on iTunes and as a DVD. There's a card on his wall that says, Next life might be kinder, which became the name of a novel by Howard Norman. As an amateur photographer, I showed some of my photos (street photos) to a group of (mostly younger) people recently and was condemned for not getting their consent before I took their pictures. Imagine what would be lost if those were the "rules" back then. RIP Robert Frank.
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@lizzie8484 thank you for the info on the documentary.
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@lizzie8484
Thanks for the information.
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The Obit overlooked his most important attributes:
1. He was a man who was NOT easily influenced by those around him, but influenced others around him greatly and immeasurably.
2. He belonged to that "Club of the Few" along with Lee Friedlander; Henri Cartier-Bresson and Elliot Erwitt who always managed to be at the right place at the right time.
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Goodbye to another artist who captured a world so different from the oppression and mind-numbing conformity we live with now.
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@Roy G. Biv
Indeed (even if indigo isn't in spectrum.)
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I'd also recommend that people check out the work of William Klein.
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There is no relationship between Frank's photos and kline
@Edward
Yes a great photographer
Sad news. Anybody who cares about photography as a medium of artistic truth owes a big debt to The Americans. But the long fade-out of Frank’s career also says something important. Back in 2004 he said: “The kind of photography I did is gone. It’s old. There’s no point in it for me anymore, and I get no satisfaction from trying to do it. There are too many pictures now. It’s overwhelming.” That glut of images has become a kind of collective blindness.
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Saw a Frank retrospective in Amsterdam in 1995. It was brilliant, emotional, unforgettable. Incredible photographer. Love him.
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Frank changed the way photography is viewed & used. His influence lives on in photographers who do work in socially significant ways.
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As a student of Photography I clearly remember when I was introduced to the Art of Robert Frank, it changed my life. I was so inspired by his work and his journey and how beautifully they were interwoven through his photographs. His way of looking at the world and at the same time understanding his own personal influence on what he is observing made his art much more powerful.
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An Icon no doubt.
He made images during a time when you were absorbed in the work without the distractions of digital cameras, cell phones, social media, video and 24 hour sound bite cycles and for that reason along with his talents we have an impactful body of work.
As a photographer who has worked since 1980 and has seen the evolution ( though downward one) of photography I can say there are few image makes left that are not posting on instagram, looking at the back of their digital cameras and a host of other things that distract them from being in the moment.
If Frank worked in the 21st century instead of his time we would have lost a National Treasure.
Fair Well, you will be missed but not forgotten!
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@J. R.
Check out photographer Matt Black- very powerful work- a practitioner of Frank's credo:
"my sympathies were with people who struggled"
2
I find it utterly amazing and a true gift to make such lasting beauty with only a camera and black/white film.
Mr. Frank was a genius and then some. So many of his photographs tell stories within stories in one photograph.
Many years ago a friend of mine told me that she was going to have her entire wedding captured in only black/white film. I thought she was off her rocker.
And then I saw the proofs.
It was then that my eyes were finally opened to the majesty, elegance, sophistication, and humble beauty of black/white photography.
It was then that I started reading and devouring the works by Robert Frank and Ansel Adams.
My only disappointment in this article is that there weren't more of his photographs.
Thank you for such a wonderful article about Robert Frank.
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The world is less today than it was. We have lost a great artist, a kind man who was generous with his gifts to so many of us. Words fail. Thank you, Robert, for all of it.
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I’m embarrassed to say that before today, I was unaware of Mr. Frank and his work. I suspect I’d seen many of his photographs before, but owing to their very nature, they look as if they were taken by no one in particular – the “snapshot effect” no doubt. I’m glad his work is no longer anonymous to me. I suspect there are many out there equally ignorant. It’s an odd thing to say of someone’s death that it’s timely as the one doing the dying is rarely to agree. The content of his photographs is subject matter this nation is in constant need of reminding, now in particular for reasons not worth adumbrating. If his death at 94 brings fresh eyes to timeless images already 7 decades old, if his passing helps make present the disquiet that lies just beneath our collective contentment, then that’s a good thing. That said, now I need to get to work on purging the image of “Willem De Kooning, pacing his studio in his underwear, paintbrush in hand,” out of my head. That's one image I could do without.
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Much love and condolences for Andrea and all Mr Frank’s community of friends. I am so grateful for his work and mindfulness of being an individual in a society that devalues so many. The lens of the photographer focuses, and the soul of a society is captured in images. His choices speak volumes about the kind of person he was. I found myself grieving that he’d lost his two children years ago, and his first wife as well. None of us are immune to suffering, but making poetry with our lives makes all the difference. Thank you Mr. Frank. All who have cared salute you and your precious life.
13
In addition to being a brilliant photographer, Frank was a brilliant book artist. I've come to believe that crafting a coherent body of work—one that's significantly greater than the sum of it's parts—is a more serious and interesting challenge than just making a good picture. It's maybe a cliché at this point to say that Frank was a master at this—even if he had editorial help (everyone gets editorial help). I've returned to the Americans over and over again to try to tease out insights on how to turn a pile of images into magic.
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His work spoke of a shared humanity with honesty and humility. He remains my all-time favorite photographer, such an amazing eye. Beautiful.
Thank you, Robert Frank.
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Towards the end of the duet Color and Light from Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George is the line "I can look at him/her forever...." Which is the way I feel whenever I am looking at photographs from The Americans. The series goes beyond fascinating. Each one has an entire story, a lifetime of its own. RIP Mr. Frank, thank you for sharing your talent and vision with the world.
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@Yertle yes color and light!
I was fortunate enough to be working for Andre Schiffrin at Pantheon in 1986 when we reprinted "The Americans." It is an iconic book and I keep it close at hand, as I never tire of looking through it, always finding something I have not seen before or rediscovering something I have forgotten. I cherish the inscription on the inside cover: "For Scarlett. Thank you for the NEW AMERICANS in NYC June 1986. Robert Frank."
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"The Americans" enjoyed wide success in the late '60's, nearly a decade after its initial publication, due in part to the confluence of many factors. The pictures, resulting from a long road trip, resonated with American youth who hit the road in record numbers during the period. In addition, the anti-war atmosphere challenged the comfortable and bourgeois vision of America that had prevailed. Frank's jarring views, often literally as well as figuratively askance, found sympathy with a disaffected audience. Finally, alternative lifestyles proliferated then and Frank's approach was, if anything, unfamiliar and unconventional.
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Such a brilliant man, so sad to see him leave us but he left behind a body of work which is unforgettable.
11
Whatever your opinion of Robert Frank’s work you must admit that he accomplished something that very few photographers (or artists in any medium) ever come close to accomplishing: he’s not only left an indelible mark he also deflected the trajectory of his medium. We can argue whether or not he really was a “great” photographer, and whether or not he did anything noteworthy since The Americans. But the transformative vapor trail that that single body of work has left in the skies of photographic arts was more than enough to qualify Robert Frank’s work as “great”.
Personally I am very glad that Mr. Frank lived such a long life after achieving stardom and was able to enjoy its glow for so long.
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"... my sympathies were with people who struggled. There was also my mistrust of people who made the rules.”
His photographs demonstrate this ever more so than his words. And we are, all of us -- generations past, present, and future --the beneficiaries.
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"How do we know that we are not dead"
From the film Pull my Daisy
I always thought of that expression in that our present life on earth might just be an afterlife.
My friend who helped me in the past by reviewing my own photographs and writing about them now the world waits for the hundreds of accolades and memories of your work
7
One of my all-time favorites along with Bresson. The Americans is a masterclass, raw and unvarnished. Every photo a story. Interesting that Bogdanovich is mentioned here because I always felt that The Last Picture Show was heavily influenced by Frank.
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A giant has left us. People now take pictures of themselves and the food they eat at their primary subjects and have little understanding of the legality of taking pictures of others in public, which is all right because the professionals know. Frank's goal was to show honest images. The goal of many today is to have a photo or clip become a meme that can be monetized. Meanwhile, newspapers, a huge platform for good photographs, are dying by attrition, and those that remain disappoint by using stock photographs, clean and illustrative enough, but soulless.
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@Bridgman
I respectfully disagree and think you should take heart. I find newspapers, at least the New York Times and the Washington Post, foster and support great photographers such as Tom Brenner, Erin Schaff, Anna Moneymaker and Jabin Botsford to name just a few. Their "eye" on things is sharp, intelligent, and sometimes just the laugh we need.
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@Sally
Sorry, but I don't think that a small number of newspapers keeping their integrity makes up for the snowballing decrease in daily newspaper circulation and staff and the increase in closures. My home city newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, has an ever shrinking news hole and its budget doesn't allow for as many full time photographers as it did in the past, so there are many more stock images in use. I doubt as many appreciate the power a photo on hard copy has versus the ephemeral nature of the screen, even a big one.
It's great when a newspaper has photographers as skilled as the ones you mention, but I bet if they have children they're not advising them to follow in their career footsteps. Can you name a newspaper or a magazine that has more photographers than it did twenty years ago?
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@Bridgman, since the availability of inexpensive cameras, people have always taken pictures of mundane things. The iPhone is nothing more than the modern version of the Brownie camera.
There are still many professional photographers. They've not been displaced by people with selfie sticks. If you take the time to look, you'll find hundreds of photographers creating new, interesting work, every day of the week. Photography has not lost its soul, but you do have to make an effort ...
Newspapers may be dying, but the photobook has not ... and it's a better medium for sequenced pictures. Frank knew this. That's what The Americans was, one of the first consciously created photo books. Frank wasn't a newspaper journalist.
3
Rest in peace, Robert Frank. If people would look at your photos not merely for their greatness, but for the story they tell - the story of an America built on short term memory, inequity, and much cruelty - perhaps a redemptive road forward would become more clear to those of us asleep at the wheel as our landscape rapidly degrades and our past and present are jilted by screens, automobiles and stock markets. To anyone who hasn't seen it, look at "The Americans."
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@Michael
you are so right. Its empty. The culture around us is empty... There is so much beauty, so much depth. This beautiful man captured it in such a heartbreaking, soul shaking way. Truly a great loss.
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All photographs are lies. They have to be. As the Muses told Hesiod about imagination on Mount Helicon long ago.
The Americans, in particular, is a powerful and influential, even brilliant, lie that we love to return to.
We will not speak evil of an unusually cruel soul who was able to use his gifts to crystallize his vision, and make it seem like the truth to so many.
May the earth rest lightly on his bones.
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@Frank D
The best PHOTOGRAPHS are actually HONEST reflections of a specific photographer's (artist) point of view, how he/she sees things, how it appears from their perspective and often reflects the artists honest opinion and experiences. Something wrong with that?
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@Frank D. Fortunately, Photographs are just paper and not even images until the view projects an emotional response onto them. And the viewer is a mass of changing physicality and emotion-response; all changes moment to moment. I did not know him until I read the article nor think of him as cruel but I know now that you do. Sorry for your history. It sounds painful. His karma to have a legacy that includes others remembering him as cruel. A life, perhaps, can be seen as a photograph we are responsible for. I have met people others do not describe as cruel in their assessment of their legacy. It makes one consider more deeply; everything.
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@Frank D
Please elucidate. How, exactly, were his photos "lies". They were certainly highly selective slices of "reality", as any work of art is, but I don't see any intent to deceive in his work, which I think is the fundamental characteristic of any lie.
And why do you feel that he was an "unusually cruel soul"? He may have been, I don't know. But I don't see that as a basic trait expressed through his work. I actually see in his work a hunger for truth and an expression of the nature of humanity in a world filled with hypocrisy and self-serving fantasy. His work serves as an effective, important, and moving counterpoint to the prevailing worldview of the time (think Normal Rockwell.)
It strikes me as odd that you would find his worldview so offensive that you feel the need to denigrate him as a person for being so effective at sharing it.
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When the adage "single picture is worth a thousand words" was coined two centuries ago, it spoke prophetically of the work of Robert Frank and those who are inspired by him.
Thank you sir.
27
RIP Robert Frank.
One of the greatest postwar artists, right up there with Pollock, Rothko, Rauschenberg, Warhol, or whomever you want to name. Not that the art world understood that. Still doesn't.
30
Thank you Robert Frank for telling the truth about America in photographs so brilliant, dark, funny and sad; for loving the beatniks so much to film them and collaborate with them; for opening your soul to us about the tragic loss of your 2 children and making this work about the unbearable; for living on the Bowery and giving us a thrill when we spotted your unassuming slightly disheveled figure shuffling down the streets and we would quietly say to ourselves WOW. That's him. The GREAT Robert Frank. RIP. We all loved you.
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Robert Frank was an inspiration for me. I have studied his photographs since I was a teenager and, whatever he may have thought about the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, I continue to see both masters as my own strongest influences and as the two photographers whose work must be investigated by anyone with an interest in 20th century photography.
35
For me, Frank’s photos are of the same America without its make-up on that we see day in and out, but need to be reminded exists, what with the relentless efforts around to sugarcoat everything American into sentimental tripe, patriotism or unbounded joy.
Frank knew we only need reminders to banish the hype that bombards us. His is a humble artistry, respectful of its weary subjects and of us looking in. At long last (why is it so hard?) here lived an honest man.
What’s more: That’s a beautiful photo of Frank accompanying the article. If it’s true, as they say, after 50 you get the face you deserve, look at his (totally frank) and honor it.
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Sometimes, when a towering figure passes away, we look back on the work and understand how it was a product of its time. But Frank's work is beyond that. Prescient, raw, powerful, stunning it transformed photography. And it continues to be relevant today--everything he saw about America, its good and bad , its ugliness, its cruelty, its ambition, its recklessness and its few places of unexpected beauty and possibility for redemption, can be said to describe the place we live now. He was always right and he still is.
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Thank you for your beautiful, meaningful, and cinematic photography, Mr. Frank. RIP.
34
I too was influenced by the fine work of Robert Frank who had a great influence on my way to first photograph and then view the world.
His life and world view will be missed.
19
When I first saw his work as a young photographer, I was stunned by Robert Frank's raw, emotive power that captured the world uncomposed.
A highlight was when he came to Yale as a visiting artist: we watched a film; he spoke about New York and photography a bit. This was heaven.
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His New York photography was my introduction to his work, and it blew me away. I didn’t know such creative expressions were possible with a camera and black and white film.
15