ROBERT FRANK- AN OLD MAN FROM BLED IN HIS GARDEN
Robert Frank, a Swiss immigrant that came to the United States in the early 1950s, became a photographer who delved into and reported on the very pulse of Post- World War Two America and in so doing revealed how the political/cultural issues of the decade immediately following the Second Great War truly affected American daily lives. In 1955 Robert Frank, along with his family, got into a car and with his camera traveled across America in order to see first hand how the new Superpower state was reacting to and entering a post-war society and in the end took around 28,000 photos. Unlike most photographers of his day, Frank decided to capture the isolation and desolation of human identity in the various people he encountered, allowing darker sides to human emotion come across his lens. Frank is known for having used low light in his images and even using photos that had a blurred quality, which in the end attributed, in my eyes, to those photos displaying that more isolating feeling that resonated on the photographed people. Frank would get right into people’s faces and capture the inner and outer look they had, a look that on many faces spoke of hardship and dissolution and the need to escape from the racing society all around them. Frank had many photos of cowboys and small-town Americans and these photos took me in for the truth of discomfort and struggle they showed on the reactions given by the individuals, especially that shot of a cowboy on a street in New York City. Franks’ most famous works derived from his photos that caught the racial tensions and chaos that was raging throughout America in the 1950s and 1960s, revealing to many the true hypocrisy of the United States at that time when it spoke to the world and claiming itself as a land where people can be free and enjoy the gift of equality and rights. Many prominent people from that time that too saw the hypocrisy of their own society were men such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, both writers and poets of the Beat Generation that through literary and artistic circles flourished in the 1950s and early 60s in America and regarded Frank as a man who could speak for millions of Americans and depict their struggle and lives just as they did through their own words and stories. Kerouac, who became the preeminent Beat and is regarded as the voice for his generation due to his definitive book about drifting around America and Mexico during the late 1940s titled On The Road, was drawn to Frank and ended up writing the introduction for his classic photo book titled The Americans, which came out in 1958 and is regarded today as a classic of the photo genre. Franks book, coming out at the same time as Kerouac’s On The Road and Ginsberg’s poem Howl, was to me the photographer’s answer to the Beat Generation, allowing them and those surrounding them a glimpse into the reality of America during the Eisenhower era and a telling on how that challenging era defined a nation and its scattered/divided people.
The image that I used from my Slovenian collection that reflects a piece of Robert Frank’s work is a photo I took of a man working in his garden while I was visiting Bled. I discussed Frank’s work as a look into the isolation and alienation of people as they went about their lives and I felt that this photo connected with Frank from the viewpoint that I was able to glimpse a part of this old mans life. He was being caught in a moment of pure human joy that he appeared to be experiencing alone despite the woman in the background window. I was searching for an image of a Slovenian individual that appeared oblivious of the outside world though at the same time still being apart of it and contributing to it by their daily actions. The man’s face is clear with acceptable lighting that is showing his pleasure in picking those flowers, secure in a personal bliss so to speak. There is an inviting smile to the camera on his face and his focus seems clear and only for his garden, a garden that appears to hold a high place for this man and has I gathered for many years. The background of my shot has a small bit of blurriness that distorts the woman from clear view, though at a glance one can see a distraught face staring out onto the lake. Though she appears to be staring onto the lake I also suspect that she is taking some notice of the old man toiling in his garden and the reason for her angered face remains an intriguing mystery for me. Through this photo I have managed to capture two individuals secure in their isolation and yet open to the outside public for view, one entrenched in gardening and the other looking upon a lake with an image of longing and anger. These two people are separated and at the same time connected through that isolation and my effort was to try and relate that personal alienation being acted out in a garden as well as being portrayed in a blurred window. Who knows if in the next moment after taking this image that feeling of isolation passed out of being for these two individuals? All I know is that I clicked the camera at the right time and was able to portray a man who was experiencing both isolation and personal happiness and that moment will remain.
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