Robert Frank Outtakes
(Rudy Rucker is a guestblogger. His latest novel, Hylozoic, describes a postsingular world in which everything is alive.)
There's a great show at the SFMOMA now, showing all 84 prints from Robert Frank's classic mid-1950s photo book The Americans, along with some outtakes, such as the image shown above---which is not in the book.
The reason the image above looks funky is because it's my photo of Frank's casual working print that's glued to a wall at the show with a bunch of others. More outtakes can be found in Looking In, the catalog for the show, which also includes all the prints from The Americans---but I'd say the print quality of the images in the catalog isn't as good as in the book, although the catalog does have a lot of interesting essays.
I've had a copy of The Americans for years, and I study it fairly often. So it was almost dizzying to see the book's 84 pictures on the walls, in order---it was like getting inside this world at last.
Another cool thing about the show is that they have, like I said, a wall of these working prints of Robert Frank's outtakes for the book, all curly-edged, as if still in Frank's studio. He took some 20,000 photos while driving in a huge loop around the US, then printed the 1,000 pictures that he liked best, and then winnowed those down to the final 84.
I grabbed shots of two of the outtakes for this post. I like the waiting-room scene at the start of this post, the languid curve of the woman's hand, and it's cool that these aren't models, they're just people hanging out. Women actually wore hats like that in the 1950s, even in bus-stations!
And the outtake below shows some Buicks getting unloaded and, in the background, on the billboard, a guy with a moose.
From Jack Kerouac's introduction to The Americans:
Robert Frank, Swiss, unobtrusive, nice, with that little camera that he raises and snaps with one hand he sucked a big sad poem right out of America onto film, taking rank with the tragic poets of the world. To Robert Frank I now give this message: You got eyes.
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My girlfriend and I saw this exhibition in Paris a couple of months ago - it was fantastic, and we bought the book shortly afterwards.
We didn't see these particular "out-takes", but there were a few extra non-book photos around. They were as good as anything you'll find in the book, so I can't imagine how hard it must have been for Frank to whittle them down for the book.
I saw quite a few of Frank's photographs in Indianapolis last year (along with the original ON THE ROAD scroll). I thought they were amazing...I could stare at them all day. I still haven't purchased the book, but I will someday. I wish someone would publish an outtake book as well.
Being a former resident (and admirer) of NYC, one of my favorite quotes by Frank is: "The subway is pure theatre. It is wonderful to look at, to understand what you look at, and to be sympathetic to what you look at." You can see that spirit in all his work.
Excellent post; thank you!! I was unaware of the show at SFMOMA, and it may be worth a special trip up to see it.
saw this show in DC at the Nat'l Gallery. Simply fantastic. Social commentary beautifully made.
neev
I saw this in Paris too, at the Jeu de Paume. Alas, the show ran concurrently with one in New York, so the Paris show's The Americans photos were mostly prints from 1982. Still beautiful, and the photos Frank did a few years before, in Paris, were vintage prints. But that's a quibble. The show was awesome.
And if you want to see those people in color and motion, get ahold of "Jazz on A Summer's Day." The woman in the top photo reminds me of Anita O'Day.
Cool - I'm listening to Exile on Main Street and this comes up. Love synchronicity...
Last summer PLANET magazine covered the re-release of the Robert Frank’s “The Americans” in their print magazine and now they’re catching readers up with the traveling collection on their website. This exhibition that began in Washington, D.C.brings the book's images to life and can now be seen at SFMOMA through August 23, before heading East to the Met in NY from September 22–December 27, 2009. To learn more about Frank and preview several images check out this blog.
http://www.planet-mag.com/blog/2009/art/ valerie-palmer/robert-frank-2/
*PLANET