Visual Vocabulary of “The Americans” by Robert Frank.

In the year 1955 the American photographer of Swiss origin Robert Frank was granted a Guggenheim fellowship, which provided him with funding to complete 2 years long project. Traveling America in all 48 States he visited Frank took 28,000 shoots, which were edited into 83 canonical photographs published in a photobook in 1958, titled “the Americans”.

Apart from being a footprint of the post war America his photographs developed anew the photography as a blend of the abstract and documentalist inclinations of his. With the iconic introduction of Jack Kerouac, it helped to establish the photography as a new art form.

John Szarkowski of MoMA argues the Franc’s iconic work to be one of the cornerstones of the photography as we know it. In many reincarnations and references his work is still an inspiration, for the likes of myself and my contemporaries.