Honeybee On Brittlebush Blossoms — Image by kenne
“When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.”
— Robert Frank
Archive for the ‘Robert Frank’ Tag
Honeybee On Brittlebush Blossoms Leave a comment
The Americans, 1958 — A Poem By Jennifer A. King 7 comments
The Americans, 1958 
–Inspired by photos by Robert Frank
Shot four black men in pinstriped suits, how
they carried handkerchiefs at the funeral in St. Helena,
held straw hats above the crease in their hearts.
Coddled bold babies with nurses, a new mother,
matching in white, special full-dress in Charleston.
Dressed a man in fustian robes and wandered
with him to baptise brothers in Louisiana river
while they raved in the cross that hangs from them.
Jostled with a Texas jukebox to play tunes
that hit you capsized into barstools.
Topped lemon pie from Detroit drugstore diner,
full — where orange whip rings 10 cents
and breadcrumbs rest in hair nets.
Sunbathed budding boys and girls, hard up
collegians in sedans and mousy swim trunks.
Played headlights in the picture, caught
the child sleeping. Mother’s eyes looked dreary
on the way to Del Rio.
— by Jennifer A. King — from Borderlands – Texas Poetry Review (Spring/Summer 2009)
Robert Frank Photos — Source: Google Images
Share this:
“The Americans” — Images With An Impact 5 comments
“Funeral — St. Helena, South Carolina” (1955), from Robert Frank’s book The Americans — Source: The New York Times
Rodeo — New York City, 1954 (from The Americans) — Robert Frank
I love photography, therefore I read about photography and photographers. One photographer that many feel changed the world of photography is Robert Frank. The book that had this kind of impact on photography was The Americans. Published in 1959, the book of photos taken from trips across America in the mid-fifties.
Not highly thought of in the beginning, because they were not the idyllic images Americans were used to seeing in popular magazines — Popular Photography magazine derided Mr. Frank’s black-and-white pictures of isolated individuals, teenage couples and groups at funerals for their “meaningless blur, grain, muddy exposures, drunken horizons and general sloppiness” (NY Times), but in the sixties his photos began to influence other photographers to take socially conscious material.
Over fifty years later the images in The Americans remain very topical. “I’m very proud of this book because I followed my intuition,” Frank said in an interview for a New York Times article (December 12, 2008) on a comprehensive publication, “Looking In: Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans,’ ” that was to go with a major exhibition in Washington at the National Gallery of Art in January, 2009.
“It’s tempting to draw associations between Mr. Frank’s trips and Jack Kerouac’s novel “On the Road,” another cultural artifact from the period, which came out two years before “The Americans.” Kerouac wrote the introduction to “The Americans,” but the two men did not meet until after Mr. Frank’s journey.
Still, Mr. Frank’s picture of a man at the wheel taken from the passenger seat of the car, “U.S. 91, Leaving Blackfoot, Idaho,” might well double for a portrait of the characters in “On the Road.” He was quick, however, to dismiss that association, remembering the men simply as “hitchhikers I picked up,” adding, “We were going to Butte, I think.” (Snapshots from the American Road, by Philip Gefter, NY Times)
kenne
Source: juicycanvas.com
