Robert Frank captures “THE AMERICANS”
Even the most ardent flag-waver is forced to concede that – sometimes – the most insightful examinations of a particular culture or society are produced by outsiders, people who peer at us from a perspective we can never share. Much of the most revered popular art, whether rock n’ roll or films, has been delivered to us, often by Limey carpetbaggers with names like Hitchcock or Jagger. Sir Michael Philip Jagger himself was among the subjects of a notorious, seldom-seen documentary, a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the Stones’ debauched 1972 Stateside sojourn, with the obscenely provocative title Cocksucker Blues. This controversial film, which continues to elude my eyeballs, was directed by celebrated Swiss photographer Robert Frank. Purportedly depicting the darker realities of life on the road, i.e., loneliness, anomie, the movie has been largely shielded from public viewing by a Stones lawsuit. Arguably, though, Frank’s seminal work remains his milestone photographic essay, “The Americans”, a series of stark black-and-white snapshots, taken during the Eisenhower years and collected in a hardcover volume, and far more redolent of Cassavetes than “Leave It To Beaver”.
I recently saw the exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, in an appropriately modernistic building in downtown Los Angeles, a ‘hood undergoing fierce gentrification, especially Grand Avenue, which the municipal powers-that-be have decided to fashion into a premier boulevard of awe-inspiring high-art edifices. There’s no question, however that Frank’s photographs transport us back to another era, one which unwittingly stood at the precipice of tremendous social upheaval, a sea change even the Gray Flannel Suit prognosticators of “Mad Men” could not foresee.
In “The Americans”, Frank’s lens seems to coax out the tensions beginning to mount – some already at a boil – in postwar crewcut America. Some of the pictures have become elegiac, paeans to a vanished era, having a similar effect to watching George Lucas’ faintly melancholy American Graffiti, a last interlude of innocence for middle-class White teens before the world goes topsy-turvy. A time when gasoline was so cheap it seemed a gift from the gods.
And Detroit, America’s Industrial Age Valhalla, was truly at its apex during the 1950s, churning out chrome-and-steel chariots for a mushrooming market they helped create. Frank suggests the economic importance of this metropolis in American life in “Drug Store, Detroit, 1955”. The lunch counter stools are completely occupied, workers chatting enthusiastically as they await their sandwiches or soup, and one wonders how the poor servers can accommodate the demand. We don’t get to know the address of the establishment, but I’d bet my Volvo it’s long gone today. The vicious de-industrialization and de-population of the Motor City has surely seen to that, rendering this image a quaint anachronism. Frank reminds us again of the heyday of Detroit iron in “Drive-In, Detroit, 1955”, depicting teens and twenty-somethings ensconced in gleaming automobiles as they take in a film at sundown. Little do they realize that thirty years on, their offspring will be tooling about in Toyota Camrys and watching movies in the air-conditioned comfort of sprawling multiplexes. Although drive-in theaters predate the 50s, they became ubiquitous during that decade due to a number of factors: cheap land, the availability of cars to minors, and the flood of home buyers to suburban subdivisions that were sometimes devoid of theaters. Also, an explosion of low-budget “B” movies aimed at the youth audience filled screens at a time when Hollywood was contracting under the onslaught of television. It must have seemed to these youngsters that this pleasant nocturnal custom would last for eternity.
Continuing an automotive theme, Frank takes his camera westward. In “Covered Car, Long Beach, CA, 1956”, he displays an undetermined vehicle, draped in a white, store-bought cover, regally flanked by twin palm trees, an arboreal cathedral of sorts. This photo clearly hints at the centrality of automobiles to Sunbelt living, as well as the growing autophilia of trend-obsessed, status-conscious Los Angeles. With the fabled Red Car trolleys in decline, the California dream would include a chicken in every pot, and a shiny, two-tone Mercury in every driveway. But why the coverlet? As the song says, “It Never Rains In Southern California”, and snow is non-existent in the valleys. Ah, but one’s ride must sparkle in order to elicit oohs and ahhs from the neighbors you might not even know. And there is that pesky smog to contend with. I daresay that if Robert Frank hadn’t taken this picture, the Beach Boys damn sure would have.
A spooky spin-off from 1950s Autorama is “Santa Fe, 1955”. An empty rural service station situated along a little-traveled highway. A quartet of white gasoline pumps seem to stand at attention, unused for the moment. The machines have an otherworldly, almost R2D2-like appearance. Close Encounters of the Robotic Kind, indeed. And hovering over the scene is a sign labeled only “SAVE”. Save what? Money on fuel? Or save us from…something? From the aliens(Communists)? Or from a darker, more uncertain future?
Inevitably, the troubling specter of race slips under the door. In “Charleston, 1955”, a middle-aged African-American woman, of coal-black complexion, cradles a White infant, presumably one she’s been enlisted to care for. The child is not merely White, but a nearly albino pale, a striking contrast to his dusky minder. In fact, the streetscape surrounding the pair is bathed in a cloudy whiteness, the calculated effect of overexposing the film. An ethereal alabaster which entraps this woman, a denizen of a Southern city still under the yoke of Jim Crow. Will the “Promised Land” arrive in time to liberate her? Or is she resigned to the sadly ironic existence of caring for the children of those who would deny her any other opportunities?
Frank also presents the male form in a number of images that thumb their nose at urbane, middle-class “Father Knows Best” respectability. In “NYC, 1955”, we stare voyeuristically at a scene seemingly ripped from the pages of Hubert Selby’s Last Exit To Brooklyn. A trio of young Latino drag queens, likely Puerto Rican given New York’s ethnic demography of the time, cavort on a street corner, intent on attracting some hungry closet cases cruising for nookie. It’s impossible to judge their precise age; they may even be minors, but it’s definitely not something you’d find in any tourist brochures of the city, not even today, unless those pamphlets were written by William S. Burroughs.
On a vaguely homoerotic note, “Newburgh, NY, 1955”, exhibits a woodsy gathering of an unidentified motorcycle gang, one of the leather-clad bikers twisting around in his seat to stare at us, apparently surprised by the camera. If the man isn’t a dead ringer for George Michael, I can’t imagine who is, because this photo almost seems an outtake from Michael’s 1987 “Faith” video, which utilized Fifties biker rebel iconography through a fetishistic 80s lens. Curiously, another attendee standing beside him is Black, indicating that their club, or at least this ‘powwow’, are integrated, as few social organizations were at the time. It may be that these men are really the proto-hippie Beats that Jack Kerouac wrote about, and “Wild One”-biker tough attire was their chosen uniform, an antithesis of the shaggy-sloppy aesthetic that their antecedents would adopt as the Vietnam conflict metastasized. And it’s no secret that the heavy leather fashion would be embraced by some segments of the homosexual community during the blooming of gay power in the 1970s. This photo enjoyed additional publicity, making the cover of an issue of the Evergreen Review.
Working-class masculine imagery also informs “Rodeo, NYC, 1955”, in the person of a Marlboro Man wannabe posing on a Manhattan street corner, a cigarette pointing from his lips, a John Ford hero who may be fated to join Warhol’s coterie of misfits at the Chelsea Hotel. Jon Voight’s naïve Joe Buck of 1969’s revelatory Midnight Cowboy certainly comes to mind, and you have to wonder what exactly this urban cowboy’s business is in the Big Apple. Performing in a traveling rodeo, perhaps? A Madison Avenue model, preparing for a shoot at Sterling Cooper? Perhaps something as mundane as a local bohemian infatuated with Hollywood Western style, and no compunctions about looking incongruous amidst his more appropriately attired neighbors.
In “Public Park, Cleveland, 1955”, a shirtless, tattooed young man is sound asleep on a picnic blanket, and it’s a timeless image, given the likelihood of witnessing the same in any 21st-century park. Our society is suddenly awash in tattoos, on both men and women, and toplessness, during balmier seasons, is far more ubiquitous in a more slovenly time.
A somewhat creepier tale emerges from “Parade, Hoboken, 1955”. We look into the windows of two apartments in a prewar brick building. To our left, a scruffy, overweight housewife, the matronly, no-nonsense type, stares out. At the right, we see only a lean figure in an overcoat, one hand buried in ‘his’ pocket, the other plainly visible. There’s something mysterious and slightly threatening about this person, as ‘his’ face is completely obscured by an enormous American flag. If the hausfrau next door is a representative of salt-of-the-earth, Pepperidge Farm America, then the headless ‘intruder’ next door may be an agent of the looming military-industrial complex, a soulless Sammy Glick ushering in a sinister new age of global socio-economic hegemony buffeted by backroom shenanigans. Our country would begin to flex its muscles after decisive victory in the Second World War, and such shadowy operators would prove indispensable.
Now in his eighties, Robert Frank is largely inactive, and reportedly something of a recluse. The field of photography is in technological flux at the moment, as digital picture-taking is rapidly supplanting the filmic method. Still, if the goal of digital photography is to match the clarity and texture of traditional film, it’s unlikely the old masters will be swept under the rug anytime soon. To that end, I have little doubt that Frank’s pictures will continued to be examined and appreciated by new generations. And hopefully, they’ll use “The Americans” as a touchstone.
>Written by d/visible contributor Terrence Butcher.
“The Americans” continues through October 19, at MOCA Grand Avenue, 250 S. Grand Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90012 (213) 621-1745
