12.2.24 — Are They Collaborators?
Are These Men Collaborators? It was 1983, and Joan Lyons posed the question in her title to a print. Robert Frank, among those posing for the camera, must have wondered as well. Among the greatest American photographers ever, was he fated to go it alone?
He must have wondered how much it was worth collaborating from the moment he arrived in New York in 1947, as a Jew from Switzerland. Not even a neutral nation could protect his family and community from the Nazis. He found work almost instantly, in fashion photography, first for Harper’s Bazaar—but was that itself a collaboration, with editors and professional models, or just a reminder of everything he mistrusted about America? He left almost as quickly for the road, for what became The Americans in 1958. It gave a face to Americans like no other work in photography, but were they, too, collaborators, or was Frank that much more in exile? Viewers ever since have wondered if this was their America, too.
Now MoMA picks up the story, with photography and film from the rest of his life, through January 11. It follows him through two marriages, both to artists, and to New York in the excitement of Beat poetry and abstract art—and with an emphasis on collaboration every step of the way. It takes him and his family to Nova Scotia, where he moved part time in 1970. He loved not just sky and sea, but even more his new neighbors. By his death in 2019, his circle had shrunk, as he spent more and more time not just in Cape Breton, but in his house alone. MoMA sees a turn after The Americans to work with others, but its poignancy may lie instead in how much he had to leave behind. Still, as the show’s title has it, “Life Dances On,” and I get started in earnest with an extra post tomorrow.
Read more, now in a feature-length article on this site.