Brief
In this assignment I was to put myself in the place of a photographer tasked with illustrating a story for a magazine. I have been given the cover plus several pages inside to illustrate.
Photographing my Americans
In 1955, having been awarded a Guggenheim grant, Robert Frank drove away from his wife and children on a road trip. Over a year and more than 27000 photographs later he produced "The Americans". In the words of Jack Kerouac "Robert Frank, Swiss, unobtrusive, nice, with that little camera that he raises and snaps with one hand he sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world." (Frank and Kerouac, 2008 : p6)
The final book consists of 83 images and has had a profound effect on post war documentary photography. Initially the book was poorly received by the American photographic establishment. His blurry images and untraditional composition angered them.
It has been suggested that Frank falls into a group of photographers who followed a fashion for using the poor as subject matter "The great photographic portraits of America—like Walker Evans’s American Photographs (1938) and Robert Frank’s The Americans (1959)—have been deliberately random, while continuing to reflect the traditional relish of documentary photography for the poor and the dispossessed, the nation’s forgotten citizens." (Sontag 1979 : P47). In my opinion he was exploring America without the bias of being an American and that gave him a fresh view.
I had the opportunity to spend 3 weeks in America visiting several states. I wanted to think about the differences in Frank's America compared to modern America and also consider the similarities.
Some things have not changed, the beatniks are back but are referred to as hipsters. People are "Proud to be an American" and this manifests itself in a jingoistic gun toting military patriotism where gas stations are "proud to support our troops" and strangers walk up to soldiers, to shake their hand proclaiming "Thank you for your service son!".There is still a place for the church and prayer.
Robert Frank's beloved juke boxes are all but gone replaced by hand held devices with head phones. The population spend a lot more time looking at screens, TV's, game systems, laptops, tablets, phones, all of these devices captivate and isolate.
Civil rights have come a long way. I am not sure how common the sight of two African Americans driving a sports car down Broadway would have been in the 50's. Men openly behaving as a couple would also have been an anathema. In Frank's day there was no department of homeland security, there was no gun boat escort for the Staten Island ferry during periods of heightened terrorist threat. Consumerism and fast food were not king and queen. Americans don't crowd into the drug store for a malted milk shake as they would have 60 years ago, instead they crowd into the apple store lusting after the aluminum and glass, must have, electronic idols. America is an incredible place to live if you have money and an uncaring hell if you have not.
Reflection
I chose not to design a cover, if this was the a real magazine assignment I would not have that kind of editorial control. I could not limit the article to 12 photographs and still give the viewer enough of my experience of the US. I feel I have met the brief, I have attempted in the selection and order of photographs to show a little of the dichotomy between the American dream and the American reality.
Throughout the module my tutor has been encouraging me to imbue my photographs with meaning and this is probably the closest I have come. If I had taken the same trip at the start of this module the results would have been very different. Some of the photos have a snap shot quality but their subject matter and position in relation to the other photos in the series hopefully elevates them from the holiday snap category.