Is Robert Frank's 'The Americans' the Best photobook? Photography

IS ROBERT FRANK’S “THE AMERICANS” THE BEST PHOTOGRAPHY BOOK? by PACO ELVIRA

ROBERT FRANK. NEW JERSEY 1955-1956

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On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Americans, the National Gallery of Art will organize an exhibition of Robert Frank at Washington, San Francisco and New York in 2009. Speaking of this important show, responsibles for the National Gallery described the Robert Frank work as the single most important book of photographs published since the Second World War. And in a recent article, published this month in The New York Times by Philip Gefter, entitled Snapshots from the American road, emphasizes:”No one has had a greater influence on photography in the last half-century that the Swis-born Mr.Frank, though his reputation rests almost entirely on a single book published five decades ago.” In the Spanish recent reissue by La Fábrica, they went even further and described the book as "the work summit in the history of photography." Despite my admiration for the photography of Robert Frank, I have serious doubts about this assertion.

The Americans was published in France, by Delpire, in 1958 and in America in 1959, but before that, in 1952 in Paris and 1954 in New York, Henri Cartier-Bresson had already published his The Decisive Moment. Aside from the importance of the creation of the Magnum Photo Agency, Cartier-Bresson brought a new style of photography based on the new 35-mm rangefinder cameras, as Leica, and his theory of The Decisive Moment is still in force today. I agree that the principles of the French photographer could not remain immutable forever, but, don’t the images of Frank, that I show here, remember quitte a lot to the ones Henri Cartier-Bresson took a few years earlier?

ROBERT FRANK. CHICAGO 1955-1956

CARTIER-BRESSON. NEW YORK 1947

ROBERT FRANK. INDIANAPOLIS 1955-1956

CARTIER-BRESSON. LOS ANGELES 1946

ROBERT FRANK. LONDON1952

CARTIER-BRESSON. NEW YORK 1947

And as someone who does shatter the style of the founder of Magnum, I would distinguish William Klein and his New York book published in France in 1956, 2 years before than the one of Robert Frank.

NEW YORK 1954-1955. WILLIAM KLEIN

NEW YORK 1954-1955. WILLIAM KLEIN

NEW YORK 1954-1955. WILLIAM KLEIN

And, even though it is also a personal opinion, I would stress also Sweet Life the book that the Dutch Ed Van der Elsken published in 1966.

SWEET LIFE. ED VAN DER ELSKEN 1959

SWEET LIFE. ED VAN DER ELSKEN 1959

SWEET LIFE. ED VAN DER ELSKEN 1959

It is true that the photographic historians suggest that Robert Frank introduces what they call the perishable moments instead of the decisive ones. But I think one of the other reasons for the consideration of Frank's book lies in the excellent text by Jack Kerouac, one of the leaders of the Beat Generation, which accompanies it. Kerouac wrote: "after seeing these pictures you end up finally not knowing any more whether a jukebox is sadder than a coffin”. Is a very bold phrase, but, is it so good the jukebox photo? Does that photo really hit us in the same manner as Eugene Smith’s Tomoko in the bath or Country Doctor, for example?

JUKEBOX. ROBERT FRANK NEW YORK 1955-1956

MÉDICO RURAL / COUNTRY DOCTOR. EUGENE SMITH 1948

TOMOKO EN EL BAÑO / TOMOKO IN THE BATH. EUGENE W. SMITH 1972

In my personal rating I would place first in The Decisive Moment, followed by New York, Sweet Life and, finally, The Americans.