Robert Frank, Strike in New York, 1952.
Hace días, el New York Times presentó con mucho respeto la gran exposición que el MoMA neoyorquino ha consagrado a Robert Frank con motivo de su centenario: Robert Frank’s Scrapbook Footage…
[ .. ]
“… Robert Frank never recovered from the success of “The Americans.” On its publication in the United States in 1959, the book was initially excoriated as un-American, particularly in the photography magazines, for its sour, disillusioned take on life in this country. The rich looked bored, the poor desperate, the city fathers fatuous, and the flags threadbare or soiled. What’s more, specialists in photography faulted his technique for muddiness, grain and blur.
But in a slow burn, Frank’s willful violation of the conventional rules of photography was understood to serve the purpose of personal expression, and his dissection of national alienation and social divides was deemed prophetic. The smoke blew away, and “The Americans” stood clearly as a towering monument, one of the most important and influential books in the history of photography.
Frank hated that. In the early ’60s, he renounced still photography in favor of filmmaking. When he went back in the ’70s to making photographs — “in the time left over between films or film projects,” as he put it — he eschewed the street photography that had established his reputation. Instead, he mostly made studio or landscape pictures, which he liked to splice together into montages or embellish with scratched and stenciled words.
It’s this late work — if such a rubric can be applied to the six decades of movie, video and photo production that preceded his death at 94 in 2019 — that is the focus of “Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue,” opening Sunday at the Museum of Modern Art. Curated by Lucy Gallun, the exhibition marks the centenary of Frank’s birth and is his first solo show at MoMA. Although there are some omissions (his return to documentary photography in Beirut in 1991, for example), it presents as eloquent a case as can be made for this later art, often left in the shade by what came before.
Frank felt trapped by the expectations and pigeonholing that the lionization of “The Americans” induced, and he recoiled in horror at the prospect of repeating himself. Beyond that, he gave various explanations over the years for why he abandoned the 35- millimeter camera that he brandished like a sorcerer’s wand. He explained that he had lost faith in the capacity of a single photograph to convey the truth. And his search had turned inward. “The truth is the way to reveal something about your life, your thoughts, where you stand,” he said. He believed film was a better way to do that.
[ .. ]
Although he argued that he scrawled words on his pictures to make them “more honest and direct about why I go out there and do it,” Frank’s pungent sensibility comes through far more powerfully in “The Americans.” In a striking self-portrait taken in his Bleecker Street home, a vertical strip of film hangs from the ceiling, and four lozenges of light illuminate the grayness. You can see the reflection of the photographer, but you can’t tell anything about him. Try as he might, he remains in the shadows”. The New York Times, 12 septiembre 2024. Arthur Lubow, The Americansʼ Made the Photographer Robert Frank a Star. What Came Next?
Las negritas son mías.
La importancia de “Los Americanos” en la obra de Frank y en la historia de la fotografía, quizá, en cierta medida, me recuerda que Valencia ocupa un puesto importante en la historia de ese libro, que Sarah Greenough, especialista emérita, resume de este modo: “En Valencia encontró la libertad que le ayudó a encontrar su camino; también la confianza en sí mismo. Valencia le aportó libertad y poesía. Se liberó de lo narrativo, del ensayo fotográfico. Le atrajo el fuerte sentido de pertenencia del pueblo valenciano, su dignidad. Mientras en ciudades como París o Nueva York estaba ocupado persiguiendo la vida, en Valencia se vio obligado a dejar pasar la vida ante sus ojos”.
Greennough y el NYT me recuerdan otros detalles importantes. Frank fue un crítico feroz e indispensable de la fotografía… que “abandonó” varias veces, para consagrarse con éxito y talento al cine documental y el montaje.
Su trabajo sobre Beirut, en un libro colectivo en el que también participaron Gabriele Basilico, Raymond Depardon, Fouad Elkouby, René Burri y Josef Koudelka, ilumina y nos ayuda a comprender la tragedia bíblica en curso.
Sus montajes, bien presentes en la retrospectiva del MoMA, me recuerdan la obra última de Català-Roca → Català-Roca, la piel y las mujeres de Barcelona.
España fotografiada por Robert Frank.
Carole says
Bonita historia, la del arte fotográfico en Valencia.
JP Quiñonero says
Carole,
Es una historia bastante conocida.
Sin embargo… temo que Valencia, como otras ciudades españolas, no hayan “capitalizado” ese puesto importante en la obra de Robert Frank, en el que han instado personalidades eminentes, incluso catalanas…
Q.-
Fina says
Quiño,
Gracias!!! Siempre aprendiendo en este INFIERNO y a la expectativa de lo que nos cuentas día a día…
Por cierto me encantó el artículo que le dedica Merçè Ibarz a Robert Frank, “Menos arte y más verdad”.
Mercè Ibarz says
Moltes gràcies, Fina!
JP Quiñonero says
Fina,
Ah… Valencia… Mercè recala por este infierno de vez en cuando. Seguro que le agradará tu comentario, claro,
Q.-