Of Props and Radioactive Wildlife

The above interior of a townhouse in Northern Liberties, Philadelphia, was intentionally minimally propped to complement the minimalist aesthetic of the space, and to showcase the design and workmanship of the construction.

We often provide our clients alternative choices of key photographs from the same architectural shoot. Typically it would be the same shot with or without a propping element.

During the shoot the client showed us a bright green, rabbit-shaped, cookie jar that we all agreed was way too much fun not to include in one frame. It's great how just one prop can energize a photograph.

There is something lovely and whimsical about the version that includes the green bunny. Also, it reminds me of a famous 1980 photograph by Sandy Skoglund entitled Radioactive Cats.

Frank Connection

This is a continuation of my writing about Robert Frank. In 1981 or so I shot a photo of a hot dog cart on the streets of Philadelphia. A sign reading "Roberts Franks" appeared prominently in the photo. It was my visual pun on a Robert Frank street photograph. At the urging of a friend who taught photography, Arno Minkkinen, I sent a copy of the photo to Robert Frank. At the time Frank's address was simply his name and Mabou, Nova Scotia, Canada. Along with an 8x10 of my photo, I wrote a short letter in which I asked about his knowing Jack Kerouac, and Kerouac's death from alcoholism in his 40s.

Frank wrote back to me, and in commenting on Kerouac's life, he wrote, "every life has its tragedies, think of that Philadelphia hot dog vendor."

I need to rummage through my attic archives and find the original letter and the photo of "Roberts Franks".

Robert Frank's "The Americans" Turns Fifty

This past weekend I visited Washington DC and saw the exhibit at the National Gallery of Robert Frank's photographs for his 1959 book, The Americans. This book of Frank's black & white photographs of America has been one of my favorite photo books since I first saw it in the late 1970s.

Casual and seemingly off hand, the photographs in The Americans paint a portrait of America in the 1950s vastly different than the sanitized image of the country portrayed in Life magazine and Saturday Evening Post. As a European outsider, Frank explored aspects of American culture that are not its best side--the racial divide between blacks and whites, the lonely interiors of bars, the sadness of the wrong side of the tracks.

For me some of the revelations of the exhibit at the National Gallery include seeing contact sheet and work prints of images that never made it into the final book. Frank shot 27,000 images in 35mm black & white on his various trips around the US in 1955 and 1956. He made rough prints of about 1,000 of those and ultimately pruned those down to 83 images. It fascinated me to see many strong images that never made the final cut.

The beauty and poetry of the book is the sum of all of the images rather than the heroics of any one specific image. There is a rhythm to the sequence of images in the book. Frank documented America's obsession with cars, the ubiquitous presence of American flags, and the despair and mystery of funerals, gas stations, diners and jukeboxes.

Another revelation to me was seeing the cover of the original published version of the book. Unable to find an American publisher willing to publish the book, Frank found a French publisher who issued the book in 1958. Copies of that version were on display. The cover features light blue graph paper representing a modern building coupled with a whimsical ink drawing of a sidewalk, pedestrians, a street lamp and an awning in a style similar to Saul Steinberg's New Yorker illustrations in the 1960s. This cover is bizarre because it is so different and disconnected from the dark and brooding photographs within.

In his introduction to the book, Jack Kerouac, author of On the Road, and a friend of Frank's sums up, "Anybody doesnt like these pitchers dont like potry, see? ....To Robert Frank I now give this message: You got eyes."