Readings 2

The first time I looked at Robert Frank’s, The Americans, I thought it was a random collection of images of America. After reading more about it and studying the sequence, I am moved by the deeply personal experience that Frank is sharing. It is a portrait of America that for the most part, is still reality. Frank, as an outsider, managed to see the truth of America better than any American at the time.

It was cool to read about the process that Frank went through and how his experiences, rather than his ideas or intentions started to take over the project. In the beginning, he did not know how complex and difficult it would be. He wanted the photographs to be poetic and beautiful. His list of symbols and places provided a framework for what to photograph, but his observation and experience expanded the content of his photographs. As an outsider, he was able to see things that Americans could not, such as what impacts the ways they interact. He said the segregation and racism of the south was a completely new experience, but he also found a group of Americans he could relate to as an outsider. His experiences exposed him to the truth of America. After looking at some of his pictures for the first time, he realized his pictures could not all be beautiful and poetic, because it was not reality.

I have had similar experiences when working on projects. Once I start taking pictures, I realize what is really true or possible about my idea. It is like a scientific experiment. I start with a hypothesis and a way of carrying out the experiment, but I learn what will work and what will not by doing the experiment.

His style of photographing also changed. He realized the breadth of subject matter and symbols was immense. He could not spend too much time thinking about taking the picture. The quote from Allen Ginsberg, “First thought, best thought” is good advice. When I think too much about when to take a picture, I miss the moment I was waiting for. I try to take pictures when I feel it is the right moment. I end up with a lot of pictures, but one of them is the moment I wanted.

Some of the things Frank discovered in his travels were things I had never thought about before. For example, he noticed that the rich were harder to find because they stayed out of the public view. The public was made up of middle and working class people, whereas the rich create a private world for themselves as seen in Frank’s photograph of the woman at the charity ball.

The first time I looked through the book, the sequence of the photographs seemed to be random. Now I realize that Frank was telling the story of American through the juxtaposition of opposites. Sequence does not have to be chronological or geographically organized to be narrative. Frank makes comparisons to show the diversity and inequality he sees and he uses reoccurring symbols throughout the book to reinforce ideas and tie the book together. I like the idea of the photobook being like a poem which must be read over and over again to understand. Every reading reveals new layers and a deeper understanding. It reminds me of a poetry class I took where I did not fully understand the meaning of the poem until the teacher explained it.

Japanese photobooks present very interesting and innovative ideas and ways of using the photobook form. American photobooks, like Frank’s, The Americans showed subjective pictures. They challenged the idea of photography to objectively show the world. Japanese photographers took this idea even further by completely separating photography from its potential to document or tell a story. The photographs themselves were objects and this was reinforced in the blurry, grainy aesthetic. If you cannot tell exactly what the picture is or what the context is, then it is a photograph, an object, not a window to the world. The objectness is reinforced by every part of the bookmaking process: design, sequence and printing. I never realized how the actual printing of the picture, besides black and white or color or the choice of paper, could affect the meaning. The type of process can enhance different elements, such as the nostalgic feel of offset printing or the physicality of gravure printing.