I saw Robert Frank: "The Americans".
Robert Frank was a Swiss photographer who extensively travelled and photographed the America of the 1950s. (The National Gallery is celebrating the 50th anniversary exhibition of that name.)
According to the prospect, the original exhibition revolutionized the world of photography by shooting all the pictures straight, abstaining from any stylizing and posing. That way the collections shows scenes that you couldn't see in museums before it: Black and white subway passengers shooting each other dirty looks, frustrated and bored-looking young people, homeless people sleeping in the parks, jaded middle class people in cars with finns.
I'll take the catalogues first that this revolutionized photography, though I find it hard. Walker Evans, for example, photographed these kinds of scenes back in the Depression, 20 years before. Edward Hopper had painted them before the fifties, but fair enough. But fair enough. I'm not an expert on the history of photography, and the exhibition had gotten a
rave review on NPR, so I went.
The exhibition, as it turned out, was good, but a little disappointing. For one, my expactions were probably too high after hearing NPR promoting it. Another reason for my disappointment is that photographers who came after Frank have perfected this non-glamorous, shoot-it-like-you-it style to a level Frank never did. That makes the Frank pictures look a bit amateurish today, their most impressive feature being the date on the metal plate besides the picture frames.
But the trip was still worth it because of Washington. The area around the Mall is a very impressive piece of park, architecture, exhibitions, and history.
