I never liked Robert Frank’s work. There, I said it. I was first spoon-fed the legend while in photojournalism school. Somehow, the program managed to avoid the likes of W. Eugene Smith, Sebastiao Salgado, and Gilles Peress, but Frank, we covered and covered and covered. It was easy. It was lazy. Not to say there aren’t redeeming features of Frank’s work. There are many, but it felt like he was the base to cover when folks in positions of power needed to check that documentary box, and it feels like people in positions of power are still checking that box. Yesterday’s visit to the Boston MFA was my proof.
Another Frank Show. Mary’s Book.
I’m sorry. This I did not need to see. Nor do I need to see another Frank show for the foreseeable future. I’ve seen dozens of Frank shows, and if I hear another critic or curator wax poetic about “The Americans” I’m going to lose it. I once saw a Frank show in New York, then flew to London and saw a different version of the same show the very next day. I never liked the book. I’ve given away every copy that somehow fell into my hands. And yesterday, when I walked into the gift shop at the museum and noticed that it was the only photobook in the entire place, my heart sank. People, we need to be better than this.
You want a book show? Why not Lauren Henkin? Want a straight documentary show? There are hundreds of contemporary photographers I’d love to see rather than another treatment of work I’ve seen before. Reality-based photography has never been given its due in the art world. They don’t understand it. Paul Graham wrote this essay, which sums up this very thing. Graham’s references are not my references. Eggleston, Shore, Arbus, Evans, Winogrand, and once again…Frank, but his point is spot on. The art world doesn’t get it. What these photographers did, or what “mine” do, is something remarkable the art world can’t explain, so they ignore it while falling back on the Sherman, Wall, or Demand side of photography. You build a set or a scene, and the art curator goes, “Look, I can SEE what you did.” You record a millisecond of reality that sums up a war, a famine, or the life of a country doctor, and we can’t art speak that. (Few curators make pictures, so they don’t know what it takes to make this work.)
I see Smith, Peress, and Salgado, and see far more visual sophistication, depth, and skill than I do with these others. I was never an Eggleston guy, or Arbus, Winogrand, or Evans, for that matter. I see a ton of YouTubers trying to be Eggleston and Shore because that work looks approachable. That work looks like it could be done anywhere at any time. Easy. I don’t see a single YouTuber trying to be Smith, Salgado, or Peress. Too difficult, too much time required, too much skill, research, fortitude, and you can’t post in real time, or those in your photographs will know you are a user looking for following more than understanding. Looking for false praise of the phony brave, the camera pointed back instead of out and into the world.
Vintage outsells contemporary roughly four to one. This is an art game. Mapplethorpe is hot and sells. A Magnum photographer I used to know a bit, someone I encountered at AIPAD, who is now dismissive and condescending, can’t sell prints, and when he does sell, they go for under market value. He doesn’t know I know this, but I do. The same applies to several of his peers. It might not be this way were it not for the continued old-school mentality of this industry, and this means both the photographer and those involved in the business of moving that photography, or promoting and showing that photography.
Photography needs reinvention. What we are doing now isn’t working. Turns out, Instagram isn’t going to save you. Turns out your iPhone photography isn’t novel or interesting. Turns out the traditional models of the industry, the models that died over a decade ago, aren’t coming back. Luckily, there are a few pioneers who give me hope. I’ve mentioned these folks many times before, so I’m not going to list them again, but anyone worth their salt will find them. (Hint: You won’t find them on YouTube.)
I love photography. My experience is mostly a private one now, but I still feel the juice anytime I’m walking with intention. I also believe the full potential of still photography can never be achieved. If you think you’ve done it all, you haven’t. Every moment of every day provides the potential for life-altering moments. Most go unphotographed. Frank deserves respect. He achieved a lot. He influenced many. But we need to expand our experience, and we need to help the masses find the beginning of the path that leads to the future of photography, not the past.
PS: Write something critical of anyone or anything, and a certain subset of readers will cry foul. This is especially true in the online space, where anyone who doesn’t heap praise is labeled as “angry old man.” I know because I’ve been called this many times. To these folks, I would remind them of the presence of the art critic, the movie critic, and the automobile critic, just to name a few. I don’t need to like everyone or everything. I’ve spent thirty-seven years watching this industry. Thirty-seven, which gives me the educated right to speak my opinion. Many of the people crying foul haven’t been alive for thirty-seven years. By the way, calling someone an “angry old man” is ageist. Something that seems to escape the minds of those slinging this term.
Comments 35
I’m a nobody and so I can’t comment on Frank’s work. But Jacob Holdt make a lot of celebrated photographers look like tourists.
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Anyone can comment. His work might set you on fire or not, but either is totally okay.
“There, I said it.” Thank you, seriously. I’ve scratched my head over the Americans many times. I felt it was important picece so the photographer desreved the repspect but that was it. An imprint of a long gone and never returning era that we might feel nostalgia for. It probably brings up the same feelings in you guys when I look at 50-60 years old photographs of my birth place. They hold historical value but wouldn’t hang any of them in my house.
“Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.” – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Only an imbecile would think otherwise.
PS: I said that, of course, in jest. In my youth if you insulted someone that way you might get your clock cleaned. Now anybody can sit in their basement and make disparaging remarks about anything they want and there are no repercussions. That’s one side.
The other side is that many people find a connection with things that others regard highly. It is difficult for them to form their own opinions independently from others because they value being a member of the herd. They avoid the risk of embracing something new that might separate them from others.
Put the two sides together and you have someone with no true individuality and has nothing better to do than criticize and call people names.
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Luckily, I didn’t make disparaging remarks. His work doesn’t do it for me, and I’m not sure why the art world goes back again and again when there are SO many others worthy of attention, but I did learn from Frank. Just not via the images.
Daniel: I’ve been following you (in a non-creepy way) for many years now and can honestly say I’ve never seen you make disparaging remarks about people. Or maybe if you did and I didn’t notice because I agreed with them. To be totally clear I was referring only to those who lob “angry old man” comments, and worse, just because they can get away with it. ‘Nuff said on this thread! Moving on to your Apr 28 post… 🙂
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I’m sure I have! Who doesn’t love a good takedown? But no issues here, I figured you were talking about the angry old man crowd. Several months ago, I wrote a post about ageism. I haven’t released it yet, and might not. It talks about one particular demographic that is the most blatant ageist group, at least in my experience. I also reached out to a few others my age and asked if they too had faced this type of thing. Every person said “Almost daily.”
Great post, one of your finest and most thoughtful. And I like Robert Frank. That book was introduced to me early in my photo-appreciation education, and in the context of the late 70s punk movement, so the off-handed, gritty, diy feel of Frank’s work had meaning for me. I can still look at some of his images and feel a fondness for them, but they are markers of a certain place and time. Frank went in search of something more from his photography shortly after the Americans; he got his hands involved in the work more, and many became so personal and cathartic that it felt a bit intrusive to look at them.
I’m not a photographer, but I use photography, mostly for my journals now. I recently took a photo out the window of the Guggenheim museum cafe….I think it’s an interesting composition of Wright’s architecture and the pool of dirt on the unused terrace out the window, and the grey sky that day. The photo has great resonance for me: it’s a marker of a wonderful day with my wife, in a city that I hadn’t visited in decades, seeing wonderful art, all in the context of a time in America that feels at times as ifwe are on a precipice of sorts. That photo would mean little to most, but years from now it may function as a sort of aide-memoire. For me, of all the functions of photography, that is the most interesting.
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First off, thank you. Second, I’m not sure why his work didn’t do it for me, but I do remember seeing two shows which featured his contact sheets. I loved that presentation, and I learned a lot about how he viewed the world, and I learned he didn’t have a light meter because his exposures were all over the place, which ultimately didn’t matter much. What I learned from Frank was the power of the edit. The Americans book was either 27,000 images or 72,000 edited to 51. THAT came to me during the Palm Springs Festival in a class where we studied…The Americans. I just wonder why we repeat so much. Why is it so damn hard for contemporary types to get in the door. They can be built into businesses but it takes time.
Interesting. Sometimes the layperson needs to see the craft and effort to appreciate the final product. I think the photographer needs to be able to articulate their vision, or hire someone to help do that, like a technical writer does for science and industry. We all need to teach our audience. As a graphic designer, client education was the biggest part of the job- helping the client define their needs, and sometimes having to smash their dreams of a fancy gold-plated logo, like the ones thought up by their cousin/sister/neighbour who could draw real good. If your market (whether sales, views, or posterity interests you) thinks you are a random snapper, you need to think about what differentiates you from that. Not easy, but essential. I think it is especially difficult for those of us who usually express ourselves visually, rather than verbally or in writing.
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I think Frank could do those things, and did do those things, but for some reason his efforts didn’t strike me. As I mentioned below, he did influence me in other ways, namely the edit.
There’s no accounting for taste. It’s personal. I don’t particularly like Adams, Leibowitz, Franks or Mapplethorpe. But I do like Eggleston and it’s harder than it looks to even imitate his work. But folks let’s move on. Mapplethorpe has been dead for 36 years. Surely there are artists of quality we could explore (and galleries could show).
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I get paying tribute, and doing shows for legends makes sense for the business of photography because they sell way more than any contemporary photographer, but at some point I have to ask “Why this AGAIN?” I like Annie’s early work. I love Ansel as a story and a craftsman but I’m not a landscape guy, so the work itself wasn’t at the top of my list. There are tons of good photographers working today but you might not see their work.
Right there with you, Dan. Never felt Frank’s work was very satisfying to me. You named many of my absolute faves. J
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And that’s okay. I thought the first two Star Wars movies were epic, unlike anything I’d seen at that point in my life. The third started to lose me, and the next three were insultingly bad.
I suppose it’s quite personal – in terms of “formal training” >.. I have none. But I can flip through Robert Frank’s work very quickly —- on the other hand work by Salgado and Fan Ho make me pause at each image and wonder how they saw that / how they captured that and wow.
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And that’s okay. Same for movies, literature, etc. We each find the pace we enjoy.
Hey Dan! It is really one of your most insightful and bold posts. I thoroughly enjoyed how you maneuvered around the difficult corners of criticism here. Of course you have the huge industry experience that allows you to clearly differentiate between great works and good works. I don’t have that experience yet. I am fairly new into the field. But what I have seen is that I don’t blindly follow or copy any photographer’s work or approach. I take bits and pieces and learn from the positive sides of the photographers and try to build my own approach with those positives. It does sound somewhat pretentious but till now I have learnt a great deal like this. I like the spontaneity of Frank’s works, but now the exposures, I like the ‘everything photographable’ approach of Eggleston, but not the subject matters themselves. So, I completely understand your viewpoint. Respect!
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It’s difficult to say anything truthful these days as criticism isn’t viewed like it once was. I learned a lot from Frank but not with his images. I’m baffled by how often I see the work being exhibited. That’s the part that gets me. Why? I know the cultural relevance but there are many others who did similar things.
Wondered when someone would have the ‘courage’ to question the work of Frank. I actually like some of his pictures but don’t buy into the mystique of the book. I prefer the book ‘looking in’ where there is much more copy and some of his emotional outpourings of art. But this is a much avoided debate. Why is it much avoided? probably because folk are afraid to put their heads above the wall of conventional wisdom. I can at least understand most of Frank’s work, something I can’t say for Jeff Wall and some of the Dusseldorf School crowd. I’ve read and watched Jeff Wall attempt to explain his photography, and to this day I absolutely don’t get it at all, to the point where I’ve given up, on account of me just not being bright enough. As someone said once; If it’s printed 10×8 it’s documentary, if it’s ten feet by eight feet it’s art. The two photographers who come to mind that transcend the aforementioned is Larry Sultan and Philip Lorca-diCorcia; Big ish prints but documentary. Photography is to getting overwhelming, I find myself seeking simple pictures, stripping away as much information as possible without losing the point. I often find these pictures in older work, possibly because it’s more often black and white but probably because it’s represents a simpler time in our lives.
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The online world, at least the prosumer/hipster online world of photography isn’t built for critique. Many of the people in this space have never had a real critique, so anything non-flowery is considered an attack of sorts. Say you don’t like a movie or song and all is well. Say you don’t like a photographer and you must be an “angry old man.”
I identify so much with this blog. Thanks for posting. It feels like we are supposed to like and worship some photographers and their work just because we should, whereas they are often famous because of the historical context they worked in and the impact their work had at the time. I tried several times but I struggle to make myself like Frank’s The Americans. I literally can’t stand Eggleston’s work and really struggle with a lot of Stephen Shore’s work. Diane Arbus? Not a fan. As a street photographer I don’t rate Vivian Mayer that high. But I understand their place in history and the context. That does not mean we have to like the work. Eugene Smith, for example, had a great impact on the photography world with his photo essays and rightly so, but also his images were spectacular. The craft and the depth in his images is amazing. And the essays are riveting. Salgado just doesn’t ever get old, I still marvel at his early work as much as later work. Peress I know less because I still haven’t bought his books but I intend to. I struggle to remember more than two images from The Americans. But when I try to say that in the photography community it seems blasphemy, I get really odd looks. It feels refreshing to hear you saying it didn’t do it for you as well.
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As I mentioned before, the online photography world isn’t built for critique or differing opinion. It’s all about falsity and flowery praise. Or “Great capture,” nonsense. Critique is a part of any creative pursuit. There are tons of photographers who have grand statue. Many make work I don’t relate to. I try to ask myself why I don’t relate, try to learn from it. In some cases I realize the weak part isn’t their work, it’s my understanding of the world.
Let me preface this by saying I’m a rank amateur. In that vein, I decided to take some of my photography books and go through the images one by one and write about them in my journal. My thought was that by analyzing the photographs might make me a better photographer. I started with The Americans and as I went through I had trouble deciding why some were great. I thought it was just my lack of knowledge. Probably is but I’m moving on to Dream Street.
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That’s a great exercise. Like Hunter Thompson typing out Hemingway.
Frank obviously has his place in history with The Americans but I actually prefer his final work, the messy collages/text images. As a Canadian I’ll admit to being sensitive to the fact that the art world at large only refers to him and his influences as Swiss/American while ignoring the fact he spent a least half, if not more, of his life in rural Nova Scotia where much of the collage/text work was created.
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Canada doesn’t count Don, unless it becomes the 51st state. You can dumb down your schools, get rid of decent food and spend all your time spending. You will love it. Before you hit 300lbs and get diabetes.
There was a big photo auction a few months ago. The highest estimate was for a Maplethorpe photograph. There were some arguably big names in that auction catalogue. I can’t understand what would drive the price of that Maplethorpe print.
I also wonder what the 2025 financial burden would be for a random journalism graduate to embark on becoming the “next Salgado?”
If one’s inroad is to go abroad and teach English is there enough time left over to really hone one’s craft?
I make at least 1 silly mistake every time I take out one of my cameras.
I don’t even photograph weekly consistently anymore.
I think photographing what is easily accessed and close to you is the only way to get the important basics into that almost subconscious place and then move into the really good stuff.
That Paul Graham essay is really good.
Dan, thank you for the inspiring words as always……….well, maybe just thanks for making me laugh!
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Laughing is most important part.
I thought I was the only person in the world who wasn’t interested in Frank, Winogrand, Shore, Eggleston, Gilden, Arbus, etc. And dare I even say it… Meyerowitz! These photographers made huge contributions to the medium, but their styles or subjects aren’t appealing to me. It’s good to know I’m not alone.
I recently discovered the work of Brian Brake — his Monsoon story for Life magazine was superb! His work is strikingly different — more poetic, humanistic, and visually lyrical. His sense of drama and color stands apart.
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Brian is one of those people who fell through the cracks. I can remember his spreads page by page.
So sad to hear of Salgado’s passing today (5/23/25).
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Yes. I wasn’t aware he was sick, and I don’t know the connection between malaria and leukemia.