Troll Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 A recent thread here on Robert Frank prompted me to haul down my copy of "The Americans" (reprint from Aperture, not the oridinal Delpire). I was struck by two things. 1)How very dated so many of the pictures seemed to be, but not in the Walker Evans sense that they were "of a time." The cover photograph of a New Orleans streetcar must have been intended to portray segregation, with a grumpy looking white lady in the front and a sad looking Negro in the back. The trouble is that it doesn't work. Not even then, I think, and certainly not now. There are a few images which hold up, but not many. 2)The prints are not good, mostly very muddy shadows, and somewhat flaky contrast. The standards of printing has been raised by orders of magnitude since these were done. The book was derided in America when first published because of it's social context -- today I'd say that it fails from a pure photographic viewpoint. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
m_. Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 that very much is your opinion. every sheet works for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeff_lu Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 i think it does work Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike dixon Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 I haven't looked through the book in several months, but many of the images are still quite clear in my memory. And not because they were remarkably bad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michael_matsil Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 "dated" "doesn't work" "Not even then...certainly not now" "not good" "flakey" "standards...raised by orders of magnitude" "derided" "fails" Bill: I'm not finding any substantive criticism here. I can tell you don't like it, but why? By the way, If you are looking at one of those Aperture soft cover books that they send you with your subscription....my experience is that they compare poorly, print quality wise, to original publisher sources. So when you say, "The prints are not good...." be aware that you are not looking at the prints, you're looking at ink reproductions, and poor ones at that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ray . Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 I don't think the photographic art world's assessment is going to hinge on your opinion, Bill. Maybe you'd come up with "muddy" and "dated" for Goya's Black Paintings? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ray . Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 I don't see the woman in the front of the bus as necessarily "grumpy" or the woman in the back as "sad". I think that's your interpretation of it, and I doubt it's what Frank saw or intended to show when he took the photograph. It remains as a simple document...... How would you better portray this particular social and political fact of the time? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thomas_sullivan Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 Americans is superb, IMHO, it practically sits next to the computer for use during those agonizingly long scans from medium format film ;o) Michael is right though...the quality of the print repro in the book is a possibility. Philadelphia's Museum of Art's ex (or present, I forget now) curator put on a display of his own personal collection of prints from major known photographers, and also had a "museum copy" of the book that complemented the show. The actual show was excellent, the repro's in the book sucked big time.........can't believe he let that happen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mdanger Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 I'd be careful what I said about older photo people here, since last week's thread about the death of Helen Gee got deleted for who knows what. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alan c. Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 on the contrary, it is robert frank's "pure photographic viewpoint" which makes "The Americans" an enduring, fascinating book. let's leave questions of politics, "social context" and so on aside, let's talk a bit about Frank's photographs from a purely aesthetic or technical point of view: he was one of the first to "allow" himself to be personal, to be introspective and unfettered by the "rules" of the time. so we have blur, we have dark shadows, we have tilting frames, we have elements in and out of focus. Graphically, in fact, Frank is using a version of Cartier-Bresson famous idea of the decisive moment, but perhaps in a contrary way, to convey "anti decisive moments" or "indecisive moments" ; moments of dead time, empty space. Frank used available light photography to, and beyond, the limits of the technology of the time. Certainly if you shot those same pictures today with modern lenses and film they would get a bit sharper, contrastier, whatever. But that is precisely besides the point. The photographic ability to communicate a mood and a emotion can come as much or more from breaking the technical rules than it does by following them. and it is this approach which prevents "The Americans" from being "dated" -- of course the cars and fashions are of the '50s -- but the perspective is one that we take for granted now. Jack Kerouac in the introduction has a visceral, personal response to the photograph of the girl in the elevator: he wants her telephone number so he can ask her out on a date! while that might strike some today as a bit misogynist or insensitive to women, in fact it is the kind of direct, gut-felt, emotion that you certainly would NOT have had looking at the LIFE magazines of the time. LIFE moved people thinking about politics, the state of the world, the plight of the unfortunate. But it did not often, i think, make the viewer feel so implicitly involved in a photograph that he saw himself talking or relating to a photographic subject in such a normal, unrestrained way; Frank removed the idea of the "other", the sense that the people in photographs were unapproachable. The death of LIFE and the other photo magazines was blamed on TV and on the increasing consumerism of American society and the loss of values that cared about humanist photojournalism. And that was, and is, true. But it neglects also that LIFE and its equivalents also failed in part because they were unwilling or unable to embrace the messier, edgier, more personal techniques that Frank pioneered. To look at "The Americans" today is still to see an intense emotional study, a use of photography to not only describe and document, but to paint a mood and state of mind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kent_tolley2 Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 Bill - I think you're on thin ice to assume the intent of Frank's New Orleans street car photo and subsequently to judge it a failure to meet YOUR supposed intent. Your job, as viewer, is to bring your willingness to believe to the photo. If you can't muster that then you have failed as the viewer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
john_r._fulton_jr. Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 Bill---the images were shot almost 50 years ago. Fifty. So they may or may not look dated. Either way, so be it. If you look at <I>Tulsa</I> by Larry Clark published in early 1970's it probably looks dated. <I>Tokyo</I> by William Klein. Yes, it looks a bit dated. For that matter so does some of HCB's images. The fact that they look old (or dated) isn't bad. Actually, if you don't like the pictures that's okay, too. No problem. That's how you see them. Last week I got into a short discussion with a forum member about a Lartique photograph of Grand Prix racing. He considers the picture "boring". Most of the rest of the world considers it one of the classic photographs. People don't always agree on visual perception.<P> Bill, is there a book from that era that you like better? Perhaps, <I> Family of Man</I>? Maybe Ansel Adams, Eugene Smith or Garry Winogrand? Or, one today that you really like? Annie Liebowitz, Cindy Sherman, Brian Lanker, Albert Watson, Salgado, or perhaps Eugene Richards? It would be interesting to know what you <I>do</I> like. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andy e Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 Bill, is it your intent to simply stir up the pot? That's the only motive I can think of for simply starting a thread to bash Frank's work. I'm glad you're confident enough to feel like you can swim against the current of predominant opinion about "The Americans" but please back it up with some substantive discussion. All I heard was your opinion, not serious critical discussion. Oh, can you define what "a pure photographic viewpoint" is? It helps a discussion when people understand what it is you mean. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gerald_widen Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 There must be a lot of versions. I have the soft cover Scalo version with the cover photo of the flag and two apartment windows with the flag draped over one. I'd consider the printing quality good but not great. For me content is most important and these photos depict Americans and their life at the time they were photographed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mattalofs Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 "The trouble is that it doesn't work. Not even then, I think, and certainly not now" How does one determine that a picture doesn't work in a context that is long passed? "The standards of printing has been raised by orders of magnitude since these were done" Available technology has been raised by orders of magnitude as well. Ignoring that for a moment, how you can judge original print quality based on reprints? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andy e Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 Gerald, the Scalo edition is the one I have. It uses the prints that were done in the Delpire edition of the book. I could be wrong but I think the Aperture edition uses the prints from the first US edition. Apparently Frank opted to use softer-contrast renderings for the first US edition of the book. Maybe its the other way around. I can't remember. In any event, the US and French first editions used different prints, but the photo compositions were still the same. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kent_tolley2 Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 By way of explanation when I said "willingness to believe" I mean "willing suspension of disbelief" which may be more familiar. I think Frank is attracted to windows and mirrors and you see it again and again in The Americans and other works of his. In the New Orleans street car photo you have both. I've always loved the four upper mirror-like windows and their blurry reflections of some other impressionistic reality. In opposition you have the hard clarity of the images in the 4 lower windows, each a frame in itself, each a separate reality. Taken together he gives you a picture of the American South in the 50's. This is not dated, this is history. He gives you all these different realities in one magnificent photo. How many realities can you hold in your mind before it explodes? Because to hold to one reality as the only possible truth is fundamentalism. Frank puts all these realities into his photograph. He is opposed to fundamentalism I think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ed_schwartzreich Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 Whatever you think about content aside, the relatively recent Scalo edition has the best reproduction of the non-gravure editions (old Delpire / Grove Press). FWIW Delpire published a French version of this Scalo edition for the French market. I once did a side-by-side comparison between the 1959 Grove and Scalo versions, and the Scalo was pretty darn good. The various other versions in between (Aperture, etc.) just can't compete printing-wise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edmo Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 Got everything but "The Americans"...he's the man in every regard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
________1 Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 Is this the same Bill Mitchell who called Eugene Atget a hack of the highest order? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
________1 Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 Interestingly, before coming to America one of Frank's jobs was preparing prints for reproduction for one of the best known Swiss landscape photographers of the time; large format B&W work, completely anal. I guessing he knows a thing or two about darkroom work and print quality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
r_quan Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 "How very dated so many of the pictures seemed to be... a sad looking Negro in the back" Seems to me your choice of words for some ethnic groups is very dated as well. On a more constructive note I had the pleasure of seeing "The Americans" exhibit in person not long ago and the quality of the prints were first rate and not muddy or "flaky" (whatever that means). I found the work to be meaningful and important but I respect your opinions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andy m. Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 Everyone is entitled to their opinion, this is the thing that photo.net thrives on. But looking back at work done 50 years ago <i>may</i> give a false impression of the achievements of these photographers. <p>Imagine how exciting it was working in a whole new genre. <p> Just as a matter of interest Bill, what do you think of Henry Cartier Bresson's work? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dumpster001 Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 fun fun fun. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kent_tolley2 Posted October 20, 2004 Share Posted October 20, 2004 <i>'Anybody doesnt like these pitchers dont like potry, see?'</i> <BR>from the Introduction Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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