Homework #4: Robert Frank’s America

After watching the video on the exhibition of Robert Frank’s photography book The Americans (1958) and the photographs that did not make it into publications, I believe that Robert Frank is artistic in a political way and finds a unique type of approach to display his pictures. He captures everyday things that people were doing which told a story for itself. His photographs had a natural feeling to them and it was clearly not staged. It is basically everyday people doing everyday routines. It was an eye opener to what people outside of America believed American lives were like. Some of these images may have changed the outlook on life in America. The America that he was displaying was a very different perspective from what the news media was showing. For example, many of his photographs displayed racism. There are some photos which show colored people sitting on the back of the bus while white people sat in the front of the bus which depicted a racial segregation. Then, there was a photo from down South where a colored woman is holding a white baby and it makes many people wonder how a white person can trust a colored person to take care of their child, yet there is still a segregation because of their skin color. Overall, I feel like Frank’s photographs was an eye opener to many people because he did not stage photographs, but he took photographs in their natural element which spoke for themselves.