The Americans

[As part of our continuing celebration of the U.S. presidential inauguration, here's notice of an exhibition in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Robert Frank's ground-breaking book, The Americans. From the Wikipedia entry for Frank: "His most notable work, the 1958 photographic book titled simply "The Americans," was heavily influential in the post-war period, and earned Frank comparisons to a modern-day de Tocqueville for his fresh and skeptical outsider's view of American society."]

National Gallery of Art
Washington DC
Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans

"First published in France in 1958 and in the United States in 1959, Robert Frank's The Americans is widely celebrated as the most important photography book since World War II. Including 83 photographs made largely in 1955 and 1956 while Frank (b. 1924) traveled around the United States, the book looked beneath the surface of American life to reveal a profound sense of alienation, angst, and loneliness. With these prophetic photographs, Frank redefined the icons of America, noting that cars, jukeboxes, gas stations, diners, and even the road itself were telling symbols of contemporary life. Frank's style—seemingly loose, casual compositions, with often rough, blurred, out-of-focus foregrounds and tilted horizons—was just as controversial and influential as his subject matter. The exhibition celebrates the 50th anniversary of the book's publication by presenting all 83 photographs from The Americans in the order established by the book, and by providing a detailed examination of the book's roots in Frank's earlier work, its construction, and its impact on his later art."

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[text and photograph from National Gallery Web site. Caption: Robert Frank (American, born Switzerland, 1924), Parade—Hoboken, New Jersey, 1955 gelatin silver print; image: 21.3 x 32.4 cm (8 3/8 x 12 3/4 in.); overall (paper): 27.9 x 35.6 cm (11 x 14 in.) Private collection, San Francisco Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans.]

British Calotypes at the National Gallery

National Gallery of Art
Washington DC
Impressed by Light: British Photographs from Paper Negatives 1840-1860

"Contrary to accounts provided in standard histories, this exhibition demonstrates that "calotypes"—photographs made from paper negatives—flourished during the 1840s and 1850s. The exhibition follows the progress of the movement from the invention of the process by William Henry Fox Talbot in 1839 to the Great Exhibition of 1851, where the aesthetic possibilities of the calotype were amply illustrated, to its flowering in the years immediately thereafter."

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[image from NGA online 'exhibition feature' – click on 'more' above.]