The Americans

It's not a book I've ever found enjoyable, although I admit that leafing through its dark pages can be hypnotic, waiting for the next slice of misery.

I'd describe it as something of a triumph of format over function and an immense contrast with Bert Hardy's pictures of Britain before, during and after WWII.
 
One has to understand the book within its historical context. No matter what you might think of it, it is an important pivotal book.
 
I first came accross it in the mid-sixties. In London, and Britain as a whole, there was a strong air of optimism. I knew several expatriate Americans and they had a fair amount of reading material from home, much of it illustrated, which echoed the hopeful atmosphere here on Airstrip One.

I think, in the context of his time, Franks was just a glass half-empty sort of cove.
 
Sejanus.Aelianus said:
I think, in the context of his time, Franks was just a glass half-empty sort of cove.
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I agree.

I had to do a report on this book years ago in a high school photography class. That report was not very complimentary then, to my art teacher's disapproval, and my opinion hasn't improved since then.

If that is poetry then I don't like that type of poetry.
 
The one photo that really stood out for me was the Elevator Girl photo.

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I generally liked the rest.
 
If you look at the book as a forecast of what the USA was going to be dealing with for the next few decades (to this day and beyond), he made a pretty complete statement. Patriotism and religion, political machinations, militarism, media, celebrity, isolation, consumerism, the automobile and its affect on social and economic relations, race... All them chickens have come home to roost.

I know it's a way of looking at the USA that most don't want to entertain. I know of quotes from both Frank and deTocqueville writing to someone in Europe: The one thing you DO NOT do in America is criticize.
 
I agree Frank is a fairly dour sort of bloke ...you only have to watch the documentaries to come to that conclusion.
I do like the book though.
The expanded edition showing the various different crops is also very interesting.
 
Dan Daniel said:
If you look at the book as a forecast of what the USA was going to be dealing with for the next few decades (to this day and beyond), he made a pretty complete statement.
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Yes, and created just the right photographic form with which to do it. The result being a beautiful balance of form and substance. I think it may have been initially hated for both what he showed AND how he showed it.

In another thread, someone referred to it as reportage, but I think that is a pretty bad misreading. Closer to poetry, yes.
 
I enjoy the book and am able to enjoy both pessimistic and optimistic visions within photography. I look at it as the same as accepting different views in life... not all of my freinds think the same way, but I still respect their opinions.
 
Dan Daniel said:
I know it's a way of looking at the USA that most don't want to entertain. I know of quotes from both Frank and deTocqueville writing to someone in Europe: The one thing you DO NOT do in America is criticize.
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Having traveled extensively I think that statement can also be made by Americans about just about any other country I have every been in.

As for being a look at the USA that most aren't interested in seeing, my take is that the view Franks presented was all he was able to see. And to be completely honest about it, I have not seen any of his work that presented a different viewpoint.

I am personally not a fan of Franks, and it has nothing to do with his supposed predictive abilities.
 
Criticizing the book The Americans upsets some people too. I've never seen why it's so highly regarded in some circles: I can think of many books before and since that I'd rate more highly, beginning (for pictures of the USA) with You Have Seen Their Faces before WW2. Then there are the FSA pictures...

Cheers,

R.
 
I am personally not a fan of Franks, and it has nothing to do with his supposed predictive abilities.
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To be fair, he seems to have been more or less embedded in the "Beat Generation", the group moto of which appears to have been "No one does it with more misery". Anyone who hung around with Kerouac, Ginsberg, Carr and the rest of the boys in the band was not going to step onto the Yellow Brick Road anytime soon.
 
The Americans was/is a seminal work. I first ran into it in 1970, bought a used copy of the 1968 printing in soft cover. Still have it, it's well-thumbed; I've been through it hundreds of times.

It stripped bare some things and clouded others in American mysticism. It seems sometimes joyful, a celebration of the oddity that is/was America in the Beat Era of post-WWII prosperity and darkness, at other times dark and brooding, pensive over that which is, that which will be.

Whether I like it or not at any given time, it's had its effect upon me, upon the way I see, etc. Seeing the road show a year or so back, I found it thrilling.

G

“the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”

― Jack Kerouac, On the Road
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Roger Hicks said:
Criticizing the book The Americans upsets some people too. I've never seen why it's so highly regarded in some circles: I can think of many books before and since that I'd rate more highly, beginning (for pictures of the USA) with You Have Seen Their Faces before WW2. Then there are the FSA pictures...

Cheers,

R.
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All of those are before WWll Roger. The political climate of the 50's was completely different. We had just been through a world war, Korea, the Red Scare, etc., was still very much going on. Frank was Jewish, living in neutral Switzerland, though the Swiss were not very neutral, especially with their banking practices.

I look at the book and question, "What really is America?" at that time.
 
I look at the book and question, "What really is America?" at that time.
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That's a question anyone can ask of any country at any time, surely. What's more, it seems to me that it's reasonable to assume that, for each questioner, there will be a different answer. I suspect that Franks's answer was rather different from that of the majority.
 
Has anyone ever said anything truer about The Americans than Kerouac did in his introduction? This is not only my favourite photography book of all time but possibly my favourite book of all time. How sad does that make me?
 
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