Robert Frank: What Am I Looking At
Frank’s photographs of political events and celebrations clarify this theme. In the late 50s, America was still awash in patriotism. The United States had withstood the Depression, vanquished its enemies during World War II, and helped reconstruct Europe. One of the reasons Frank’s book was so widely criticized was that it portrayed America’s self-idealization as fantasy. Take Fourth of July, New York. The setting is an Independence Day picnic, where two young girls stride toward a giant, tattered American flag hanging like a curtain in the middle of the frame. The suggestion is that the girls are crossing a threshold, being indoctrinated into the prevailing patriotism. But the flag is threadbare, indicating that this reverence is unhealthy and unfounded; American ideals, like their symbols, are worn.
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The work reads like a cathartic attempt to understand the circumstances of Frank’s life: a failed marriage, his daughter’s death in a plane crash in 1974, the vicissitudes of age. One standout is Make Love to Me, Brattleboro, Vermont, 1979. It’s a nude portrait of Frank’s second wife, June, set in the lonely interior of what appears to be a cheap motel room. She gazes seductively into the camera, her weathered face and sagging breasts harshly lit; scrawled across the image are the words “4AM Make Love To Me.” This stark reminder of our physical decay also reassures us that desire persists with age.
