Robert Frank
American, born November 9, 1924
Lorenzo Castore – Fièvre
Fièvre by Lorenzo Castore is a slight wormhole of a photobook. One starts appreciating it through one side of the vacuum and comes out the other side, thinking through it differently. That is not to suggest that it is not consistent; it is. With Castore, I am accustomed to the romantic nature of his photographs. […]
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Lorenzo Castore – Fièvre
Fièvre by Lorenzo Castore is a slight wormhole of a photobook. One starts appreciating it through one side of the vacuum and comes out the other side, thinking through it differently. That is not to suggest that it is not consistent; it is. With Castore, I am accustomed to the romantic nature of his photographs. […]

Gabriele Rossi – The Lizard
Finding a nameless source’s review of The Lizard online, I read about how I should interpret Gabriele Rossi’s outsized publication published by Deadbeat Club. In its summation, the author points out several pictures from the book from which they wax lyrical about the sublime qualities of the photographs from the position of a non-American, likely […]

Igor Posner – Cargó
The first time I looked through Igor Posner’s Cargó (Red Hook Editions, 2022) I was bewildered. I did not know, for example, that across 160 pages and what feels like triple that number of images, it would express the disjointedness and poignancy of memory, or that it would render the experience of time passing as […]

Nick Gervin – Portlanders
Full Article on Patreon Gervin’s work reflects the American moment in the second decade of the second millennium through tendencies similar to those seen in a good deal of American photography during the Vietnam War era. I see some resemblances to protest coverage by Gene Anthony, a Black Star agency photographer who captured the […]

Alec Soth Sleeping By the Mississippi A 2022 Reaction
The original source material from this post comes from a long-format discussion with many different voices penning their thoughts on Instagram. I wanted to discover what people thought of Alec Soth’s Sleeping by the Mississippi in 2022. Of course, this is culled from the people who follow me on Instagram and are interested in […]

Christopher Anderson Son
Every photographer parent that I know has what to the non-parenting world seems like a self-indulgent family album project. Every. one. of. them. Myself. included. Some have several. Making photographs of the family is part of the experience of getting through life. We use the camera to illustrate the mundane, the banal, and the exciting […]

Laurenz Berges 4100 Duisburg
In reading Darius Khondji’s interview with American Cinematographer Magazine from November 5th, 2018 regarding his cinematography work on various films, including David Fincher’s epic noir Se7en (1995), I am reminded of the significance that color balance plays when sculpting atmosphere in a film and also in a photographic body of work. In regarding […]

A Conversation Between Robert Morat and Matteo Di Giovanni
RM: What is “home“ to you? Maybe also talk about where and how you grew up and where you feel your roots are. MDG: This is a question I’ve been asking myself many times in the last few years and – to be frank – I still don’t have a definitive answer. I’m more prone […]

Support the Shops: Interview With Photo Book Corner Rui Ribeiral
BF: Photo Book Corner has just taken up new quarters, new premises in Lisbon. Is this the first shop that you have had for the Photo Book Corner? Can you perhaps give us a little insight into when you started working with books? Did you come through photography or was this started from the book […]

David Billet & Ian Kline’s Rabbit/Hare Texas Reason
“The picture stays in the kid. Tell heaven don’t wait for me” What is an image produced if not the perversion of self either in or out of frame? Authorship is dictatorship, no? What to do with a pare? Game Over, and if this isn’t an obvious affront to the Texas that I […]

Jurgen Teller & Harmony Korine William Eggleston 414
“There is an emphasis on banality, but also the whispered markings of the south with dead deer and hand-painted signage” William Eggleston 414 is a compelling book for what it is and what it is not. At first, when I saw the title in the Steidl catalogue, I simply thought it was a […]

Ruminations on Paul Graham’s A1 The Great North Road
“The way in which we write history is tinged with this conundrum. It suggests blinders in the very least and in doing so, should compel an understanding of context that is piecemeal or limited” It’s often difficult to unpack a particular body of work or historic book that has been republished without regarding […]

Americans Parade – an interview with George Georgiou
“Every image poses the question of American identity not just from the standpoint of our present reality, but from the playbook of iconic images – most of them from the twentieth century – that make up the history of American photography.”

David Heath: “Dialogues With Solitudes”
“It is true that he made images at a distance, at arms length as it were, but there is a considerable, rather a palpable feeling in the images that Heath is almost placing himself next to his subject”.

Anthony Hernandez Interview: Forever
“I went down there and saw all these little paintings of landscapes, houses, little beautiful scenes. The light on that picture is from reflections of cars going underneath the freeway. The whole roll was faint, faint, faint. And then there was the clown. There are so many places like this, it goes on forever.” On […]

John Maclean: The Agony and Ecstasy of Artistic Influence
“In a sense I was trying to complete a circle: I travelled to the neighbourhoods that had some bearing on the childhood development of my art-heroes and consequently on the art they made as adults, and then I tried to photograph these places through the ‘afterimage’ of the artistic influences these works had imparted on me”

Takashi Homma: Polis and the God EYE Goodbye
“Takashi Homma is indebted to Robert Frank. This much is clear. He is as sick of goodbyes as are the best of the Swiss and as are the best of photographers”

Robert Frank’s “From the Bus” (1958)
In the summer of 1958, several months before The Americans made its debut in France, Frank began experimenting with moving pictures.

‘This Is Where I’m From’: An interview with JH Engström by Catherine Anyango
Engström looks backwards but forwards too. Tout va bien – Everything is all right.

Larry Clark on Cutting through the Bullshit and Hypocrisy of America (2007)
“People like Robert Frank inspired me. But I was really influenced more by people like Lenny Bruce.” By Raphaël Cuir, Art Press, August 2007 A year ago, seven short films by Marina Abramovic, Matthew Barney, Gaspar Noé, Richard Prince, Marco Brambilla, Sam Taylor-Wood and Larry Clark were shown at Cannes under the title Destricted. […]

Robert Frank: “Unpleasant Connections” (1991)
“In Butte, Montana, he photographed a slovenly, middle-aged woman in her car with a sullen child staring out of the window behind her. He showed a bench full of decrepit old people in St. Petersburg, Florida, staring at nothing in particular while a shiny new Pontiac whizzed by on the street behind them.” By […]

Robert Frank – “Park/Sleep” (2013)
From Park / Sleep by Robert Frank published by Steidl www.steidl.de Robert Frank – Park/Sleep – REVIEW By Fanny Landstrom for ASX, July 2013 Many of us carry a notebook in our pocket, or an iPhone at least, where we might collect our thoughts, photographs, and pieces of reading that we pick up along the way. […]

Robert Frank: Contact Sheets from ‘The Americans’
(All rights reserved. Images @ Robert Frank)

John Szarkowski On Robert Frank’s Book ‘The Americans'” (1986)
I saw it I suppose very shortly after it was published, when I was still working as a photographer myself, and it was, frankly, shocking. I sensed the power in it, and the authority about it but there was much about it that I didn’t like… The Americans was received with mixed critical reaction. Not […]

Robert Frank – “Valencia 1952” (2012)
‘”There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment” – Robert Frank REVIEW: Robert Frank – Valencia 1952 (2012) By Fanny Landstrom, ASX UK, April 2013 In 1952, the Swiss born photographer Robert Frank leaves his job and his then current habitat New York to travel with his family […]

Leaving Home, Coming Home – A Portrait of Robert Frank (2005)
Director Gerald Fox’s documentary Leaving Home Coming Home: A Portrait of Robert Frank features intimate interviews with the filmmaker and photographer. The artist discusses his feelings about how his adopted hometown of New York City has changed over the course of his 50 years living there. The director showcases Frank’s work, including clips of some […]

Robert Frank Interviewed at Wellesley College (1977)
“It was logical for me to get off doing still photography after becoming a success at it. I think it would just become a repeat—I would repeat myself.” An interview with Robert Frank, from one of ten symposiums at Wellesley College 1977 called “Photography within the Humanities”. Robert Frank: I’m just trying to, as they say, […]

A Statement by Robert Frank (1958)
With these photographs, I have attempted to show a cross-section of the American population. My effort was to express it simply and without confusion. By Robert Frank, U.S. Camera Annual, p. 115, 1958 I am grateful to the Guggenheim Foundation for their confidence and the provisions they made for me to work freely in my […]

Lou Reed on Robert Frank: “Sick of Goodby’s” (1978)
Sick of Goodby’s, Mabou, 1978, Robert Frank Paint dripping from a mirror like blood. I’m sick of goodbyes. By Lou Reed, originally published in Tate Magazine, Issue 2, Autumn, 2004 I was looking at Robert Frank’s photograph Sick of Goodby’s in his book The Lines of My Hand. Moments before I had been […]

Robert Frank – “Highway ’61 Revisited” (1987)
Robert Frank in ‘Home Improvements’ Interview with photographer Robert Frank, Film Comment, August 1987 By Marlaine Glicksman “I’d like to make a film which would mingle the private aspects of my life with my work, which is public by definition… how the two poles of this dichotomy join, interlace, are at variance , and fight […]

An Interview with Robert Frank – “If An Artist Doesn’t Take Risks, Then It’s Not Worth It.” (2007)
An Exclusive Interview with Robert Frank, Robert Frank’s Studio, New York, July 22, 2007

ASX.TV: Streetwise – “Robert Frank and The Americans” (2011)
Streetwise builds on Swiss photographer Robert Frank’s snapshot aesthetic, which gained attention following the release of his groundbreaking book, The Americans in 1959. Frank’s focus on a more personal documentary style influenced a new generation of photographers, including legendaries such as Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, Jerry Berndt, Ruth-Marion Baruch, Garry Winogrand, Bruce Davidson, Danny Lyon […]

Hugh Edwards: “Letter to Robert Frank” (1960)
Photograph by Hugh Edwards Originally published in DoubleTake Magazine, Summer 1996 May 23, 1960 Mr. Robert Frank, 34 Third Avenue, New York City, New York. Dear Mr. Frank: It seems so long since I was in New York and talked with you on the telephone that I am afraid you have forgotten the conversations […]

Robert Frank au Jeu de Paume (2011)

The Photographer in the Beat-Hipster Idiom – Robert Frank’s The Americans
from ‘The Americans’ @ Robert Frank Frank’s personality, described by Joyce Johnson as a blend of “European dourness and pessimistic wit,” certainly helped to focus his photographic vision. By George Cotkin, Professor, Postwar United States Intellectual and Cultural History, California Polytechnic State University Few analysts have captured the sadness, tensions, ironies and possibilities […]

Robert Frank’s America (1982)
The feeling among them was unanimous: this was not how America was to be shown. But what was at issue was a larger matter than patriotism. The challenge of Frank’s work in the late ’50s lay in his treatment of his subject matter and in his use of a photographic style well out of the […]

ASX.TV: “Inside Robert Frank’s The Americans” (2010)
The National Gallery of Art organized a comprehensive exhibit of Robert Frank’s work (Images courtesy of: National Gallery of Art; Produced by: Diane Bolz and Brian Wolly)

ASX.TV: Robert Frank – “Interview” (2010)
Robert Frank is interviewed by Peter Burchett.

Walker Evans and Robert Frank – An Essay on Influence by Tod Papageorge (1981)
The purpose of this (text) is to describe the influence of Walker Evans’ American Photographs (1938) on The Americans (1959) of Robert Frank. By Tod Papageorge The purpose of this monograph is to describe the influence of Walker Evans’ American Photographs (1938) on The Americans (1959) of Robert Frank. To do this, the photographs in […]

The Indecisive Moment: Frank, Klein, and ‘Stream-Of-Consciousness’ Photography (2004)
Half the time the photographers seemed not to have even looked through the camera. Far from seeking the perfect composition, the ‘decisive moment’, their work seemed curiously unfinished. It captured ‘indecisive’ rather than decisive moments. By Gerry Badger “Frank… and Klein brought to the decade a feeling for its woes which, in retrospect, synthesizes […]

Robert Frank: Dissecting the American Image (1986)
The lesson often learned from The Americans was not one of content or meaning, but a realization of the enormous strength of the attitude behind it. What a poem this is, what poems can be written about this book of pictures some day… — Jack Kerouac By Jno Cook for Exposure Magazine, Volume […]