Robert Frank's The Americans

Robert Frank's work makes a virtue of subjectivity, celebrating the artist's idiosyncratic and highly personal take on the scenes he encountered. His version of America, published in 1959 (The Americans, Grove Press), captured a nation at odds with itself, a theme underscored by the volume's preface, which was contributed by Jack Kerouac. Frank would later recall the period spent assembling the collection as a time marked by great personal tension--"I work all the time. I don't speak much. I try not to be seen."--adding that he was happy to see it reach publication, even though reviewers characterized it as "sinister, perverse, Anti-American." What surprised viewers the most was Frank's desire to question the notion of a homogenous culture, representing America instead in terms of its diversity and contradictions. In "Charleston, South Carolina (#34)," for example, an African American woman cradles a Caucasian baby in her arms, and the surrounding environment falls away before this curious moment of unity. At a time when race was beginning to make a significant impact upon public discourse, Frank's photographs struck an ironic pose, raising questions by offering a personal vision.

The photograph above, for example, depicts a television set in a restaurant (Columbia, South Carolina), with no one watching it.

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