2009 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Robert Frank's The Americans. The Met commemorates this photographic milestone with Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans, a retrospective of the images featured in this celebrated book . As Jack Kerouac aptly describes in the book's introduction, Frank's work in this series captures "the humor, the sadness, the EVERYTHING-ness and the American-ness" of our country. America is a country of contradictions, both a beacon of equal opportunity and a place of racial segregation. These particular photographs, taken during a tense time in American history (1958-1969), do not ignore this reality, and initially created a stir within the nation over its depiction. By now, however, the controversy seems to have faded and the exhibition proudly displays all eighty-three photographs from the book in sequential order.
Frank once commented that his role as a photographer was one who is "always looking outside, trying to look inside, trying to say something that is true." His statement reads especially true of this series. Several of the shots literally embody this self-reflective comment, such as the opening image of the book, Parade, which looks into a home through two windows at two women with their faces obscured by an American flag hanging outside. Trolley--New Orleans, exemplifies Frank's role as both an outsider and a truth seeker. An exterior shot that peers through the windows of a packed streetcar, Trolley reveals the racial division between the African-American passengers seated in back and their white peers riding further up front. Frank succeeds in creating a true mosaic of American life at the time, often catching people off guard, with their backs to the camera or seemingly ambivalent to his presence.
In a letter to the Guggenheim requesting a fellowship (displayed in the exhibition), Frank refers to his work as a documentation. This exhibition, in its straightforward shots of the faces, buildings, streets, cities, and rural places that constitute America, reflects his desire to make a photographic record of America in the 50s and 60s. Furthermore, by displaying Frank's contact sheets, the viewer sees first hand the unedited version of Frank's film rolls, allowing him or her to participate in the show from a documentation standpoint. Although small snippets, the contact sheets make the "EVERYTHING-ness" of which Kerouac writes even more palpable. In this sense, we are truly "looking in" at Robert Frank's The Americans.
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I also think it worth noting that the timing of this golden anniversary of Robert Frank's The Americans could not have been more appropriate if it had been planned. This traveling exhibition of his photographs falls on a year that began with the inauguration of the nation's first black president, a year that brought with it the promise of change. Frank's photographs are a window into a tumultuous time in our past, and in that they provide a source of reflection on what progress has been made over the last 50 years and what has yet to change.
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