Robert Frank Exhibit Reflection

I really enjoyed the visit to the Robert Frank exhibit.  I had heard of his work prior to this class, but I had never actually studied it, or learned about Frank himself.  It was really interesting to learn of his earlier work in Peru, where he began focusing on the people, and the everyday living of the everyday person, rather than the grand scenery or famous monuments, and how these orientations and experiences informed his later work, specifically "The Americans".  I was drawn to his work because of how raw it is, and how simple.  The shots are not set up or conceived at all, but truly spontaneous photography, capturing things that he saw that interested him.  It is amazing how much you can observe and learn about people by just sitting back and watching, and his work exemplifies this for me.  

He is not actually showing us anything new.  He is truly just a passerby, a nobody, and is not taking pictures in places where anybody couldn't go.  He is merely taking the time to point out that those things are there to see, and that maybe they are worth taking second look at.  By taking the time to photograph such "mundane" or "marginalized" things, he is immediately giving them worth, and asking if maybe they should be given more as it is.  This is, I think, why the work has had such lasting affect.  It is easy to forget what you are not looking at.

Another thing that struck me was the way they were not essentially individual pictures, but a group of and groups of pictures.  Rather than immediately hitting you with a message, Frank's or not, (although there were some that did, for me at least), whatever that message was seemed to slowly wash over you as you took in the whole exhibit, or at least the different sections.

Whether it was intentional or not, this seemed to me to imply the grandness perhaps of the human life, these pictures of little, overlooked, everyday places, slowly combining to allow us to form a new vision of America, those little, overlooked, everyday things, making up the essence and foundations of our lives.

It was also really cool to learn that Jack Kerouac wrote the Introduction to the book.  Last semester I read The Dharma Bums and On the Road, both by Kerouac, and this led me to have a deeper admiration for Frank's work, after seeing the way Kerouac appreciated it, myself greatly admiring Kerouac and his opinion.