OT: RIP Robert Frank

[dbnm]

For those of us who have studied photography, a legend has died today.

https://nyti.ms/2ZP0csZ

[cash05458]

oh man...loved him and Frank was a great guy...story: about 12 years ago or so I needed a new riding lawn mower and didnt have the money...I was a Frank fan and a friend of mine had done a thing in GQ via Bob in China...so I got his address and wrote him...told him I was a working class guy from vermont (he used to live here) and loved his work...that I had a few books I would like signed...and he was notoriously difficult about signing his books etc...but I wanted him to sign these three books and I planned to sell one to buy a new mower...he signed them and sent back from his place in nova scotia...I sold one of the books for 1300 bucks the day I got it and bought my new lawn mower and wrote him back letting him know...he sent me a return note saying he loved the whole story...still have two of his books...great guy and great photographer...Frank had it...

[nalax]

He was an inspiration to many and he will continue to inspire.

[velofinds]

oh man...loved him and Frank was a great guy...story: about 12 years ago or so I needed a new riding lawn mower and didnt have the money...I was a Frank fan and a friend of mine had done a thing in GQ via Bob in China...so I got his address and wrote him...told him I was a working class guy from vermont (he used to live here) and loved his work...that I had a few books I would like signed...and he was notoriously difficult about signing his books etc...but I wanted him to sign these three books and I planned to sell one to buy a new mower...he signed them and sent back from his place in nova scotia...I sold one of the books for 1300 bucks the day I got it and bought my new lawn mower and wrote him back letting him know...he sent me a return note saying he loved the whole story...still have two of his books...great guy and great photographer...Frank had it...

Great story.

Big admirer of his pioneering work, obviously, but as a parent, I always found his personal story heart-rending.

[avalonracing]

Wow, he was 94. I didn't know he was still alive.

[daker13]

What a great photographer. I was in Nova Scotia this summer and thought about him living up there in the summers, always sounded so peaceful to me.

[gintas_ce]

As a person who shares great interest in photography I remember the first time when I got a chance to go through "The Americans". Great photographer. RIP

[Dino Suegiù]

One of the very greatest. His and Walker Evans' work changed how I looked at so much of the world. His range was beautiful, and so important, and his intelligence rare. I think his love for his wife June Leaf was exceptional too. I remember he "complained" that still photography was often too static for him, unlike film which he thought of as music, that "there is never any rhythm in finding only 2 or 3 good frames" referring to still work, something to that effect...and yet his "2 or 3 good frames" were like 20 or 30 or even 200 or 300 for other excellent photographs.

That photograph from his hotel window in Butte, Montana may have influenced an entire generation of photographers.

He wrote: "“When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.” I think that very few artists have been able to describe their intentions and work so elegantly and precisely, so perfectly, in one single line.



oh man...Frank had it...
What a great story, really wonderful. Thank you.

[martl]

A truly great artist.

There is a bit about/with him in the documentary "how to make a book with Steidl".

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1745722/

A very interesting and sometimes very funny documentary about the man who prints many of the great photographers (getting accepted by Steidl seems to be like being granted a knighthood in the photography world)

has Frank in it, Robert Adams, Edward Ruscha, Jeff Wall, Martin Parr, Joel Sternberg, Karl Lagerfeld, Günter Grass, etc...

Well worth a try!

http://www.filmposter-archiv.de/filmplakat/2010/how_to_make_a_book_with_steidl.jpg