The short video āIn Unseen Photos, A clearer Picture of Robert Frankās Americaā by KQED shows a brief description of the exhibition in Stanford where very rare photographs taken by Robert Frank were showcased but werenāt in his very well-known book, The Americans. The themes of the photographs shown in the exhibition varied from simple to political or even bleak. Frank showed Americans as boring, uninterested people who were living a very usual life yet he repeatedly took portraits of them because they are āthe building block of societyā as described by Peter Galassi. Some of his photographs seemed meaningless but when you think back to the time they were taken, they told stories of history. One of those photos was taken of an African-American woman holding a white child. He later explained how he couldnāt understand how a white southern lady would trust her child with a black woman but wouldnāt sit and eat next to her. Frank showed interest in the south through his photographs that were taken before the Civil Rights movement, many of his photographs were focused on racism. I believe that Frankās photography is very artistic because, despite the fact that you could feel the racism or the sense of raw photographs, there’s always a sense of question that comes to mind when studying his photographs, because they show an incomplete story.
