photo 28 Jun 2007 06:50 pm
Robert Frank’s The Americans
I was first introduced to Robert Frank’s book The Americans by Ken Dozo, whom I met on Flickr. Ken pointed out that a few of my pictures were Frankesque and asked me to add them to the pool of a group he had started. I had always been curious about street photography but hadn’t really had the time to get into it. After reading about Frank on the web, I got a copy of The Americans from my local library. It was a fantastic book. I posted my initial thought in a thread in that group. Susan Catherine particularly liked this paragraph of my impression:
But what I never really thought about is that getting good pictures isn’t necessarily about just carrying your camera in your daily life and finding the great angles of the things you normally see. It’s about putting yourself in situations that are interesting and worth seeing. It’s about going out to get those good shots and get yourself involved in interesting things.
I read through the book a few times and ended up paying a nice late fee on it. I also read this long and heavily cited paper on the book that illuminated a lot of things for me. If you’re interested in Frank’s work, it’s a good read.
The biggest problem with this book? It’s hard as hell to find. It’s been printed a few times and is currently out of print. About 5 weeks ago I saw an Amazon ad for the book on The Online Photographer and immediately bought it. Well, I immediately ordered it. Amazon told me it’d be a few weeks, but I waited. Today I got the bad news:
Though we had expected to be able to send this item to you, we’ve since found that it is not available from any of our sources at this time. We realize this is disappointing news to hear, and we apologize for the inconvenience we have caused you.
Used copies of the book start at about $150. I hope it gets printed again soon. In the meantime, I will continue to advance my street shooting skills. Here’s a Robert Frank inspired photo I took a few weeks ago:
on 29 Jun 2007 at 9:52 am 1.The Short Red Head said …
This is great Chris. What’s really nice is the black and white versus the blue, yellow, and red/orange. Also, the people in the back have created this space just among the three of them, while the man at the table still grasping his paper is distracted off scene. The water bottle is fortunately just off center enough to lead you from the blue guy to the black and white. Also, it could be assumed that the photographer put the bottle there and then moved to the stairs which gives the wedding scene a little story. It makes you ask, did the blue man look at the wedding scene at all, and was the scene closer and previously got his attention? Also, the lines of the black and white group are angular; the photographer’s arm, the bride’s arm, the groom/photographer standing at attention, while the blue man is slouched, his legs splayed like the table, his newspaper gently curved. Nice Frankesque work.
on 27 Aug 2007 at 2:18 pm 2.thechrisproject photography » Learning about Garry Winogrand said …
[…] studying their prints, their books, and their writings. I spent some time a few months ago studying Robert Frank. Just recently I bought a book of Mary Ellen Mark’s work that I’ve been going […]