Frank, again

I've already complained about the excessive ink spilled on Robert Frank this year, as "The Americans" celebrates its 50th anniversary with a triumphal nationwide tour. But I just came across a great piece on the same by Richard Woodward in the WSJ on-line.

In his review (of both Sarah Greenough's enormous tome & the accompanying exhibition), Woodward focuses on Frank's rejects, as seen in the form of contact-sheet rejects (many of which are reproduced in Greenough's book) and work-print rejects (about 100 of which, out of 1,000 made, can be seen on a single wall at the exhibition at the Met). Frank made over 27,000 exposures on his trips across this country, but showed only 88 images in the final version of the book. (That's about a .3% "success" rate for those who are counting).

Of course, as Woodward points out, it's wrong to label Frank's rejects "failures," just because they didn't make it into the book. Even a quick perusal of the contact sheets and work prints reveals that Frank took lots & lots of great photographs. Images that easily rival those that appear in the book, images that for reasons known only to Frank, didn't make the final cut.

Critics and curators may believe that there's something unique about the final product, that there's something "perfect" about the particular 88 images in the book, and about their particular sequencing. Frank, too, may believe this, but I think it's hooey.

This doesn't diminish Frank's greatness; in fact it increases it. As Woodward puts it,

["The Americans"] could have been put together a hundred different ways and been as great. That's a new legacy of "The Americans": the randomness of its perfection.