Robert Frank Essay

[An unpublished essay written in 2010 © Sylvia Sukop] Ghosts of Photography—and of Bunker Hill—Past by Sylvia Sukop Call it a homecoming. MOCA’s 2009 exhibition commemorating Nearly half a century after he the 50th anniversary of the publication of photographed the down‐and‐out Bunker the book The Americans, no one had Hill section of Los Angeles on the eve of its written about it. transformation (still unfolding) into the However belatedly, I felt that these high‐rise district we know today, Robert little‐known photographs and the historical Frank donated a rare set of vintage prints moment they document deserved from that series to The Museum of attention. Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Frank’s gift of five photographs to Subjects were “fragile, soon to be gone” MOCA remains special for a number of reasons. “It was a very sweet gesture,” Robert Frank originally came to Los Angeles MOCA’s grateful chief curator Paul in 1956 in the course of photographing Schimmel told me. what would become “The Americans.” It’s also a rare one: Works of art Traveling across the country on back‐to‐ typically trade hands among dealers and back Guggenheim Fellowships, the then 30‐ private collectors, often over decades, year‐old Swiss‐born artist took more than before finally being sold or donated to a 25,000 pictures. He systematically edited museum. Direct donations of work from this vast pool of images down to the 83 artists are uncommon. photographs published in 1959 as The Making Frank’s gift even more Americans, with an introduction written by unique was the fact that these photographs Jack Kerouac. document the vanished place where they At once critical and elegiac, “The now reside. Like a returning ghost of Bunker Americans” exposed a hidden side of post‐ Hill’s past, they seemed intended, perhaps, war America marked by racial and to restore something of what’s been lost. economic injustice and disappearing ways “I can only imagine that when he of life. It remains the single most‐exhibited chose to give not just any works but these group of works in MOCA’s photographic works, related to this place, that it was a collection. kind of reparation,” says Schimmel. “In “No one ever complains that we these photographs is the history of the show it too much,” says Schimmel. “And the place in which the museum lives.” amount of time that people spend with the The reclusive artist’s gift came on work is very gratifying.” the heels of his 2001 visit to the museum’s What makes these photographs so two‐part exhibition A Room of Their Own, in consistently compelling, even 50 years on? which his landmark series “The Americans” “Frank’s pictures captured America was featured prominently in the portion of in change, an America that was going to the show presented at MOCA Grand disappear,” offers Schimmel. “Whether it’s Avenue. Frank never sought publicity for a rodeo cowboy in New York City or a the gift, and until I learned about it during Victorian house here on Bunker Hill, Frank 2 was looking for those things that were placeholder, a photographic tomb of an fragile, soon to be gone.” unknown citizen. Significantly augmenting MOCA’s To the picture’s latter‐day Frank collection, the five black‐and‐white viewers—us time‐traveling spectators now Bunker Hill photographs are among those present at the scene—the faces of this civil that the artist printed in the 1950s. crowd in their steeply raked, impromptu However Frank ultimately chose not to seats rise up like an oncoming tide with include the five in the final set of 83 that nothing to hold them back but a slender comprises The Americans. The five have not cord stretched out before the bottom row. been exhibited, even at MOCA, nor have At the time Frank visited, Bunker they been made available online. But they Hill’s days were numbered. As part of a are signature Frank images, wholly in keep‐ federally funded “slum clearance” ing with the aesthetic and social concerns of campaign, the crumbling Victorian houses “The Americans,” including an interest in would soon be razed and its inhabitants subcultures and in the dissonance between relocated. An era of downtown “redevelop‐ American symbols and realities. ment” would begin and MOCA’s own One photograph shows several construction in the 1980s would become a young Latino men standing atop a rattletrap key feature of the Bunker Hill redevelop‐ car that bears a hand‐painted number 20, ment plan, the building funded in part by possibly waiting for a street race to begin. developers’ mandatory percent‐for‐art Another captures a civic gather‐ contributions. ing—a groundbreaking perhaps?—with long lines of business‐suited men standing at Series “the big prize” in 1994 acquisition attention, one of them a veteran in a military cap saluting what might be an The gritty style of black‐and‐white, serial American flag outside the frame. documentary photography pioneered by American post‐war patriotism Frank came to dominate the field for more meets Los Angeles real estate boosterism— than a generation. it’s a potent and familiar equation that “Although there were predecessors Frank complicates by capturing in other like Brassaï and Levitt, Frank was the game‐ pictures a fragile sense of street‐level changer,” says Schimmel, and many integration in a city where racially contemporary artists, including Nan Goldin restrictive housing covenants were still and Larry Clark, have looked to Frank in firmly intact. their own exploration of narrative series. Photographed in the lofty stairwell MOCA prides itself on collecting of what looks to be a government building, artists’ work in depth, rather than aiming to a handful of black and Latina women sit build a “trophy” collection of a single work embedded within a large, mostly white by every well‐known artist—an approach group of several dozen spectators, all facing that artists, not surprisingly, especially the same direction, as they wait patiently, it appreciate. They want their current, not seems, for an event to begin. Only one face just their past work, to be seen and known. is completely hidden, and deliberately so: A The museum jump‐started its person in the second row holds up with two collecting of Robert Frank when it acquired white hands a blank card, perhaps a the Ralph M. Parsons Photography pamphlet, to block their face, both a Collection in 1994. Originally formed by momentary act of individual resistance to New York dealer Robert Freidus beginning Frank’s camera and an enduring visual in the 1970s, the Parsons Collection totaled 3 2,300 photographs—and in one fell swoop “No photographer wants to be left its acquisition by MOCA for $1.15 million in the photo ghetto. So it was obvious— increased the museum’s photographic let’s put Robert Frank between Franz Kline holdings five‐fold. The centerpiece of the and Robert Rauschenberg. These are two new collection was “The Americans.” great artists, friends of Frank, who in their “The Frank was the big prize,” says own way were exploring American culture Schimmel. “There are only four complete at the same time as Frank, from a New York sets of ‘The Americans’ in the world, and vantage point.” ours was the first set that he ever made, In the center of the room lined with selling it to a dealer who sold it to another photographs from “The Americans,” who sold it to Freidus.” Schimmel has placed a boldly colored The book The Americans has seen crushed‐automobile sculpture by John numerous reprintings including a new 50th‐ Chamberlain, seeing it as yet another anniversary edition from Steidl. Steidl remnant of American culture. More simultaneously published The National importantly, Schimmel adds, “Chamberlain Gallery of Art’s in‐depth examination of this and Frank are friends, they go back a long body of work, Looking In: Robert Frank’s time.” The Americans. This 506‐page expanded As a curator, Schimmel is constantly edition is a library unto itself, brimming thinking about these kinds of personal with scholarly essays, a definitive relationships. “You put the history of art chronology and map of Frank’s travels, together in terms of shared genre, shared contact sheets, letters and other revealing iconography, but also in terms of shared archival material—most of it drawn from relationships. These things count for a great the National Gallery’s extensive Frank deal. There’s something about the collection. relationships that transcend both the material and iconographic aspects. I don’t History of art as a history of friendships even try to enumerate it, I don’t put it into a wall text. I feel like people get it.” Selections from “The Americans” were first Certainly the artists themselves get shown at MOCA as part of the 2000 it. And although, in 2001, Robert Frank’s photography exhibition, The Social Scene; was a private “stealth visit”—typical, says the presentation was thematic, situating Schimmel, for artists visiting shows in which the images within a social narrative. their work is featured—Frank’s positive Schimmel tried out a new curatorial reaction did get back to Schimmel who was strategy in the MOCA exhibition A Room of delighted to hear it. Their Own in 2001–2002. In 1994, the same year that MOCA “I thought this would be an acquired “The Americans,” the National interesting time to break the material Gallery organized Robert Frank: Moving division between photography and Out, its first‐ever exhibition devoted to a painting,” he recalls. “It made a great deal living photographer.

Load more