Photoshop: Frank and The Americans

This video does my work for me...

This collection takes a lot on: class, race, gender, ethnicity, culture, social stigma; it's a beautiful collection. Its also a bold statement to be made: a coffee table book of pictures titled "The Americans," but what is missing is the subtext, photographed by a foreigner. This is an outside in interpretation of the people of 50s America.

Hailing from Switzerland, Frank escaped to New York City in 1946 from the Nazi machine in Europe. He quickly found photography jobs for various magazines and publications. Early in his time in America, Frank was excited about immersing in a culture so completely different from his native Zurich. However, he quickly learned that due to an overemphasis on money, wealth and greed, American fast paced life became something darker, bleak and lonely. This new prospective becomes very visible in his post war collection, for which he is most famous, and of course, the subject of our study: The Americans.

While receiving large critical acclaim, the collection also earns Kerouac's attention. In later editions, a forward written by Jack is included. He writes:

"That crazy feeling in America when the sun is hot on the streets and music comes out of the jukebox or from a nearby funeral, that's what Robert Frank has captured in tremendous photographs taken as he traveled on the road...with the agility, mystery, genius, sadness and strange secrecy of a shadow photographed scenes that have never been seen before on film"

We see high compliment, but more. Not unlike Kerouac's own writing, there is obvious romanticization of "America," or what it means to "be an American," that typifies most of the Beat Writer's work. Frank's images speak to this concept: pictures that tell tales of class structures, fraternity amidst tragedy, and the open optimism of the big open road.

The collection works, not only as a dark, gritty eyeball focused on Post War America, but does well to comment on what an outsider sees inside this country. There are countless images with large, billowing flags, proudly waving in black and white. This is a patriotic critique of a broken culture. The tip of an iceberg that the Beatnik culture will chip at for a decade of writing.

Finally, Kerouac concludes:

"To Robert Frank I now give this message: You got eyes. And I say: That little ole lonely elevator girl look up sighing in an elevator full of blurred demons, what her name & address?'