Swiss-born photographer Robert Frank, always a keen observer
of the mundane, spent 1956-1957 documenting the USA. His photos from this
journey became a book called The Americans, though others from the
project were not published for another 20 years. This current book, In
America, includes his earlier photos from 1949-1956, taken across the USA,
that didn’t make it into his first.
The first two photos
in this book are of old men in California, and they have the quality of
snapshots, with no attention to framing. However, what they lack in composition,
they more than make up for by capturing the mood. In the photo, titled Main Street California 1956, a hunched
old man in an ill-fitting suit shuffles across the street, looking like a hobo.
He’s the only guy in the photo, alone in a vast expanse of auto dealerships and
drug stores, oblivious to his surroundings. His hand in his pocket makes him the
air of a country bumpkin, and you can see the chain of a pocket watch hanging
from his belt. Maybe he really was a country bumpkin? Maybe he came to
California during the Great Depression and never lost his country habits? Maybe
he even arrived as a hobo? He’s a sharp contrast to the man in the second
photo, wearing a tailored white suit and hat and riding a bike, his chin up in
the air. Yet even that photo is funny, because few men commuted by bike in the
1950’s.
Differences
abound; the people of New York, Chicago, and Miami are well dressed, compared
to the slovenly unwashed people of North Carolina. The Detroit auto workers
wear short-sleeve open-collar shirts, baseball caps, and have an “I don’t give
a damn” attitude. The city people in Frank’s pictures obviously pay more attention
to their hair, clothing, and grooming habits, a trait that I still see today.
During a visit to Wilmington, Delaware, I saw how the locals dress like
construction workers, in baggy jeans and chunky shoes, even on weekends, while
New Yorkers wear tight-fitting clothes and high heels (even the men). From
these photos, you can tell the difference in the habits of the city and country
people, along with the way their careers effect their manner, which has not
changed in the years since. However, one difference I see between the 50’s and
today is how the people age. There’s a photo of a man in a gray suit and hat,
in the club car of a train, and he looks to be at least 60. But was he? Could
he have been younger? Nowadays, men who grew up in the 1970’s don’t look old,
at least not the way their ancestors did. Furthermore, I have to wonder whether
the wealthier classes were truly happy. Is the gray-suited man in the train
satisfied with his life? Those of you who read the novel The Man in the Gray
Flannel Suit ill know how dissatisfying life was for the white-collar man. Were
the slovenly Detroit auto worker in a better mood? They would have made just as
much money as the gray-suited salaryman, and if not, Detroit’s auto workers
could still buy houses on their salaries. As for the social class differences,
the wealthy-looking ones don’t all look happy.
Some photos in the
book are risqué, like the one of the Puerto Rican transvestites in New York.
Others capture the racial attitudes of the south, like the one of the Black
woman holding a White baby. Frank said he was shocked at the racism of the
south; White women wouldn’t think twice about trusting a Black woman with their
kids, but they wouldn’t let her sit on the same park bench. I’m sure there was
class conflict in Frank’s native Switzerland, but the skin color issue would’ve
made American racism more evident. Then again, if Frank had visited London at
the time, would he have commented on the racial segregation there? Or the
segregation in Paris? Racial segregation is not restricted to the USA.
I first saw Robert
Frank’s work at the Whitney Museum in 1996, in an exhibit titled Robert
Frank: Moving Out. The exhibit was placed simultaneously as another one,
about Beat culture in the 1950’s. Perhaps Robert Frank’s photos captured both
mainstream and fringe in American society? Was it because he wasn’t American? In
a trend started by Alexis De Tocqueville 120 years earlier, he joins the ranks
of Europeans who document American life, with the awe and disgust of an
impartial outsider. Frank’s photos capture the peoples’ way of life, and leaves
the viewer to draw conclusions.
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