Robert Frank at MOCA

In 1955, Swiss-born photographer Robert Frank won a Guggenheim Grant to photograph American people and places. For two years, he traveled by car throughout the United States, amassing over 20,000 negatives. The edited portfolio of 83 photographs was published as The Americans in France in 1959. The American edition included an introduction by Jack Kerouac, the Beat writer most famous for his novel On the Road. Describing the emotional scope of Frank’s portfolio, Kerouac wrote: “After seeing these pictures you end up finally not knowing whether a jukebox is sadder than a coffin.” Frank’s photographs, which have become landmarks in the history of photography, were created with a hand-held Leica camera, often with a wide-angle lens, resulting in compositions that appear unplanned, spontaneous, and are ultimately revealing.

The MOCA exhibit is a rare showing of the complete set of images from Frank's book. The exhibit runs thru October 19th of this year. MOCA.