() Robert Frank, dies at 94

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[Tin Can]

RIP

Watching "Pull My Daisy" now

[Keith Fleming]

I have wondered if Frank's "The Americans" influenced the development of the "New Topographics" that is so dominant in photography in Academia.

Keith

[Chester McCheeserton]

I have wondered if Frank's "The Americans" influenced the development of the "New Topographics" that is so dominant in photography in Academia.

Keith

i don't think most people would say that, or at least not as directly as the artist Ed Ruscha's cheap books did. but there's a book called 'Robert Frank in America' that came out in 2015 that shows lots of work made around that time that wasn't published in 'The Americans' and the picture attached here would in fact seem to support your thought.


I'm sure all the artists in the NT show were aware of Frank's work tho. some of Henry Wessel's landscapes maybe seem to have the most direct link, imo

[Chester McCheeserton]

but then again this picture from 'The Americans' certainly does point more directly to the connection

[Mark Sampson]

You could ask Robert Adams or Frank Gohlke. I'd think RF's influence on the NT guys was indirect at best- Frank's work in stills is almost always in movement- not something one associates with the New Topographics (and I saw the original show at the Eastman House in what, 1974?). Still, Robert Frank's influence has run wide and deep.

[reddesert]

Interesting idea.
I would guess not directly: I think a lot of Frank's impact was to bring a sort of subjectivity to work of a photo-journalistic style - rather than didactically telling a story, he made pictures that both captured something of what he was feeling, and demand that the viewer put their own subjectivity into the interpretation, rather than telling you what to think. Even a photo as direct as the segregated trolley in New Orleans in "The Americans" leaves it up to the viewer to understand what is going on.

Meanwhile, the New Topographics photographers appear to me to have been striving for a kind of deadpan objectivity, acting as documentarians. The Ruscha books like "Every Building on the Sunset Strip" are an extreme example of documentary impulse, in a way. Of course I'm reducing a movement of disparate people to a sentence, so it's bound to be inaccurate. Certainly Frank's influence is widespread, probably even among photographers whose work doesn't superficially look like his.

I too was stunned by "The Americans" when I discovered the book as a student in the mid-80s (around the time it was reprinted).

[Tin Can]

Lead or follow, can't do both

[Chester McCheeserton]

question of change to outlook; notice;influence are interesting & worth much conversation
BUT
neither of the robust gearsheds of LFPF, photrio are where I would take up such a discussion.

NT is rich with at least 2 pathways as follow-up, even at the camera counter freezer.

j.- - -

Well it was your notice that prompted the discussion on this particular 'gearshed'.

what 2 pathways are you talking about .... and by camera counter freezer you mean?

[BrianShaw]

This is mostly too cryptic for me to understand... but I’m sad about the loss of Robert Frank.