How to begin a photo book
Robert Frank, Parade, Hoboken, New Jersey — Plate 1 from The Americans, 1955. Source. Reproduced here for criticism and comment. Rights remain with the photographer or their estate.
How to begin a photo book?
Robert Frank, Plate 1 from *The Americans, *Parade, Hoboken, New Jersey.
Here, two people, one face obscured by shadow, unsmiling, perhaps anxious, one lost entirely, decapitated, by a billowing American flag, itself cropped and partial. The subjects look out; the photographer looks in.
The brick is grimy. We understand from Frank’s caption that there is parade. Jingoism occludes what seems a grim reality.
From this beginning, it’s easy to understand how Frank’s work was viewed as subversive and cynical or, more generously, a critical reflection.
What at first seems a lousy photo is, as beginning, a rich salvo.