Wednesday, April 13, 2011

On Robert Frank......

Robert Frank visited Salt Lake City sometime in 1956 while working on his seminal book, The Americans. The expanded edition (known as Robert Frank's The Americans: Looking In) shows all his contact sheets and I walked around downtown last year sometime looking for some of the things/places that were on his contact sheets from Salt Lake City.



Plate 54 in the original book (page 275 if you have the "Looking in" edition), shows this building. This is a famous building in Salt Lake City known as the McCune Mansion. Frank's photo was taken at dusk, while standing at the bottom of the steps. A sign that is no longer there is a key point in his photo.


The contact sheet shows a few pictures of this apartment building that is across the street from the McCune Mansion. There is also a picture of a man walking past the temple on the contact sheet, however, I was unable to locate him.

If you haven't seen The Americans, it's definitely worth checking out, whether you like photography or not, just to see what America looked like in the late 1950's.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I watched a documentary in class about Robert Frank. Loved it! I had never heard of him until then.