#366
I remember the first time I saw a copy of the Americans. In the bowels of a bookshop in rain soaked Glasgow it jumped out the shelves like a bolt of lightning. As soon as I had opened the book I was completely struck by that very first picture. An ashen figure emerges from the shadows – The aftermath of the Second World War and naive optimism of the nuclear age. It is fitting that the window frames the figure as she emerges out of the shadows. Such a simple visual device that is fraught with tension as the deep black frame offsets the pure white window blind. From the centre of the frame the American flag beheads another figure as it bends and contorts in the wind. It’s ripples look almost like it’s on fire – perhaps a nod to McCarthyism and the Cold War. Frank articulates only too well the historic struggles that we now know followed in the years to come - the struggles of the Civil Rights movement, the folly of blind nationalism that led to the horrors of Vietnam.
Parade – Hoboken, New Jersey - a second bolt of lightning.
I carried it with me for months, devouring it on the train, in class, wherever I could and I would wax lyrical to anyone who would listen – about that photograph in particular. The physicality of the image and its stark, cryptic nature drew me in. It still does, even now. Frank’s photographs seemed somehow to show the future, inevitable yet unknowable at that time. Looking at Parade - Hoboken, New Jersey taught me how to read and I began to see a kind of poetry that only photography can register. The rest of the book flows out of this picture - a bolt of lightning recorded in 35mm film.
By the Glow of the Jukebox - The Americans List II
p. 127 - 128
Red Hook Editions
2016
Ed. Jason Eskernazi
ISBN 978-0-9841954-2-8