Lot Essay
"About the Ten Bus Photographs, New York City 1958"
These photographs represent my last project in photography. When I selected the pictures and put them together I knew and I felt that I had come to the end of a chapter. And in it was the beginning of something new...." (Robert Frank, The Lines of My Hand, Lustrum Press, 1972)
Robert Frank's life and work has been wrought with irony, notoriety and popularity. Nonetheless, he has been an artist severely critical of his own accomplishments, willing to police his own successes - and failures - allowing himself to move through vestiges of image-making other artists might otherwise have happily parked themselves in. Undoubtedly, this has set him apart from his contemporaries, especially those in the practice of making photographs. As a photographer who embraced (albeit briefly) a fashion and editorial vocation and even more briefly toyed with the notion of photojournalism, he ultimately rejected them all for an artist's sensibility. Ironically, Frank benefited tremendously from publishing, the primary vehicle for those photographers whose approach he turned away from. Frank's book, The Americans, is at the center of critical thought on the photography of the second half of this century. The images created for The Americans, made in 1955 and 1956, were first published in France in 1958. The selection, however, was too volatile for an American publisher to handle until the following year, leading to a characterization of Frank as an iconoclast and a dubious cult figure. The influence of The Americans is almost universal; what it did for Frank was singular.
By the end of the project, Frank recognized that the style he had developed would be difficult to continue without repeating what was already accomplished in endless variations. If he continued, the style would control his vision. He edged toward the decision to make films (Brookman, New York to Nova Scotia, p. 83).
Frank's decision to leave still photography for film may have its roots in freelance work he did for a motion picture company after serving in the Swiss military (ibid). Regardless of the roots of this transition, it would seem, in retrospect, almost inevitable. While the impact of the individual images comprising The Americans cannot be denied, so much of the book's impression depends upon selection and sequence, the fundamentals of editing.
His fear of repetition as a creative pitfall was real. For Robert Frank, the risk of revealing one's artistic deficiency was preferable to never testing one's capabilities. Once, when asked why he left still work to make films, Frank replied, It was logical for me to get off doing still photography and becoming a success at it. I think I would just ...repeat myself. I have found my style, and I could build on that, and just sort of vary it a little bit here and there. But beyond that, I don't think there's much beyond that. I've never been successful at making films, really. And there's something terrific about that. There's something good about being a failure - it keeps you going (Photography within the Humanities, p. 53). His departure from still photography came soon, but not immediately, after the publication of The Americans in the United States in 1959 (see: Alexander, #277 for exact dates). In between came pictures published in Advertising Age for the series "New York Is...", the July 4th Coney Island images from 1958 and perhaps most poignantly in regards to his transition, the varying sequence, From the Bus.
The series From the Bus, New York City was the last self-designed project Frank produced before retiring from making still photographs for fifteen years. The series, of which there are probably some thirty different images that he printed at various times, has been presented in altering incarnations both in exhibition and in published form. In the 1962 Museum of Modern Art exhibition, Harry Callahan and Robert Frank, eleven prints from the series were exhibited. In the three editions of Lines of My Hand, different selections for each were chosen. The selection offered here is most likely the largest group of images from the series that he produced as a suite. In that regard, this group is probably unique in format and content.
From the Bus can be seen as the bridge that links these two essential periods in Frank's career. Deliberately aimed at a plastic, open and non-linear narrative, a technique he would often employ in his later films, this suite is numbered in sequence on the verso of each print. Not surprisingly, these do not correspond to the sequence used in the MoMA show or in any publication of the work.
Frank's presentation of the images in From the Bus is unique in his work of the period and is a precursor to his 1970s photograph collages from Polaroid positive/negative film. The gray border surrounding the images functions to emulate the effect of viewing the scenes through a bus window. In an attempt to make the pictures more "real" and closer to the artist's experience, Frank conversely distances himself from the subject. The effect stresses the physical barrier of the shell of the bus that separates the photographer from the crowds and implies his own transience. The people photographed are only on occasion aware of Frank's activity. For the most part, they are singled out, alone or in groups, alienated players on an urban playing field. Frank and his camera are contained, moving and recording the chance encounters of the bus. Unlike the extroverted essence of The Americans, the images taken from the Bus series presage the introverted and private nature of his later autobiographical films and stills.
These photographs represent my last project in photography. When I selected the pictures and put them together I knew and I felt that I had come to the end of a chapter. And in it was the beginning of something new...." (Robert Frank, The Lines of My Hand, Lustrum Press, 1972)
Robert Frank's life and work has been wrought with irony, notoriety and popularity. Nonetheless, he has been an artist severely critical of his own accomplishments, willing to police his own successes - and failures - allowing himself to move through vestiges of image-making other artists might otherwise have happily parked themselves in. Undoubtedly, this has set him apart from his contemporaries, especially those in the practice of making photographs. As a photographer who embraced (albeit briefly) a fashion and editorial vocation and even more briefly toyed with the notion of photojournalism, he ultimately rejected them all for an artist's sensibility. Ironically, Frank benefited tremendously from publishing, the primary vehicle for those photographers whose approach he turned away from. Frank's book, The Americans, is at the center of critical thought on the photography of the second half of this century. The images created for The Americans, made in 1955 and 1956, were first published in France in 1958. The selection, however, was too volatile for an American publisher to handle until the following year, leading to a characterization of Frank as an iconoclast and a dubious cult figure. The influence of The Americans is almost universal; what it did for Frank was singular.
By the end of the project, Frank recognized that the style he had developed would be difficult to continue without repeating what was already accomplished in endless variations. If he continued, the style would control his vision. He edged toward the decision to make films (Brookman, New York to Nova Scotia, p. 83).
Frank's decision to leave still photography for film may have its roots in freelance work he did for a motion picture company after serving in the Swiss military (ibid). Regardless of the roots of this transition, it would seem, in retrospect, almost inevitable. While the impact of the individual images comprising The Americans cannot be denied, so much of the book's impression depends upon selection and sequence, the fundamentals of editing.
His fear of repetition as a creative pitfall was real. For Robert Frank, the risk of revealing one's artistic deficiency was preferable to never testing one's capabilities. Once, when asked why he left still work to make films, Frank replied, It was logical for me to get off doing still photography and becoming a success at it. I think I would just ...repeat myself. I have found my style, and I could build on that, and just sort of vary it a little bit here and there. But beyond that, I don't think there's much beyond that. I've never been successful at making films, really. And there's something terrific about that. There's something good about being a failure - it keeps you going (Photography within the Humanities, p. 53). His departure from still photography came soon, but not immediately, after the publication of The Americans in the United States in 1959 (see: Alexander, #277 for exact dates). In between came pictures published in Advertising Age for the series "New York Is...", the July 4th Coney Island images from 1958 and perhaps most poignantly in regards to his transition, the varying sequence, From the Bus.
The series From the Bus, New York City was the last self-designed project Frank produced before retiring from making still photographs for fifteen years. The series, of which there are probably some thirty different images that he printed at various times, has been presented in altering incarnations both in exhibition and in published form. In the 1962 Museum of Modern Art exhibition, Harry Callahan and Robert Frank, eleven prints from the series were exhibited. In the three editions of Lines of My Hand, different selections for each were chosen. The selection offered here is most likely the largest group of images from the series that he produced as a suite. In that regard, this group is probably unique in format and content.
From the Bus can be seen as the bridge that links these two essential periods in Frank's career. Deliberately aimed at a plastic, open and non-linear narrative, a technique he would often employ in his later films, this suite is numbered in sequence on the verso of each print. Not surprisingly, these do not correspond to the sequence used in the MoMA show or in any publication of the work.
Frank's presentation of the images in From the Bus is unique in his work of the period and is a precursor to his 1970s photograph collages from Polaroid positive/negative film. The gray border surrounding the images functions to emulate the effect of viewing the scenes through a bus window. In an attempt to make the pictures more "real" and closer to the artist's experience, Frank conversely distances himself from the subject. The effect stresses the physical barrier of the shell of the bus that separates the photographer from the crowds and implies his own transience. The people photographed are only on occasion aware of Frank's activity. For the most part, they are singled out, alone or in groups, alienated players on an urban playing field. Frank and his camera are contained, moving and recording the chance encounters of the bus. Unlike the extroverted essence of The Americans, the images taken from the Bus series presage the introverted and private nature of his later autobiographical films and stills.