THE US OF A(MERICANS)
Trolley—New Orleans; Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans
“I go into post offices, Woolworths, 10 cent shops, bus stations. I sleep in cheap hotels. Around 7 in the morning I go to a nearby bar. I work all the time. I don’t speak much. I try not to be seen.” – Robert Frank
Sunday after church I walked up to The Met in the rain with a friend. We went to go see an exhibition that celebrated the 50th Anniversary of Robert Frank’s book, The Americans. We walked away from staring at 84 photographs taken in the late 1950′s stunned by what one man could see and what he saw to be true.
While I’ve lived in New York City almost 9 years, my friend is fresh off the boat as of 2 weeks ago. For her, every moment is an event. Five different languages spoken at once on one bench in one subway car. Taking in the glaring differences in the solar system that is New York City. Each neighborhood might as well be another city. In some cases certain zip codes look as through they have been transplanted from Asia or South America. There is a rainbow of trains that run underground and sometimes they are all working other times you can only count on two and on the weekends it’s up for grabs. The pigeon to person ratio is close to 1:1, and rats have the human race here easily doubled though most of us would rather not admit to this fact. Everything happens in front of you. Most of the time, all at once. Whenever you go somewhere new it’s easier to frame and make a composition of the unfamiliar. The beauty of it all is that the filters are limited in relation to an uncharted space. Filters will always exists; I mean look at us, we are now growing gray hairs. None the less, a newness allows you to see things as they are…most of the time.
rodeo-new-york-city_1954
How do you process it? How do you take it in or why do you filter it out? Everything looks different through a clean pair of eyes. We need those perspectives in order to see afresh.
I’m relatively new to photography and she has been a photojournalist in 4 different continents. I’m still trying to figure out technically what to take in when looking at photography and she runs through her entire process subconsciously in the first couple seconds upon viewing and spends the rest of the time acknowledging what the photographer was actually “seeing”. Me, not so much.
Robert Frank was from Switzerland and saw our country for what it was in his eyes. He sought after the entire scope that was America at that time, though if you replace the set design, this period piece becomes a present day biopic of our country.
In April, I began reading On Photography while I was in Italy. It poses an interesting question that has been running around my head like a bull in a China shop.
“What do you see?”
It’s a question many layers. After one is exposed another reveals itself.
“What do you believe about moment X?”
affects
“Why is that ironic/tragic/touching?”
affects
“Why do you respond to x,y,z in such a way to care about moment x?”
All of this seems to ultimately reflect the following question.
“What do you know to be true?”