"Black and white are the colors of photography. To me they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected."
A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Robert Frank [born 1924] travelled across post World War II America documenting his adopted country.
though he had been trained in a rigorous Swiss tradition that aspired to photographic perfectionism, Frank's free-wheeling odyssey echoed the spontaneity of Abstract Expressionist art and Beat poetry.Like Jackson Pollock [1912-1956], he stood in the middle of the picture; he was released from the conventions of traditional picture making.
Jack Kerouac [1922-1969] described Frank's qualities as "agility, mystery, genius and secret strangeness."
