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© Tod Papageorge and Yale University Art Gallery, 1981

Walker Evans and Robert Frank: An Essay On Influence was an exhibition that took place from January 21 – March 15, 1981 at the Yale University Art Gallery, and explored the relationship and influence of Walker Evans’ book American Photographs (1938) on Robert Franks’ The Americans (1959). In addition to curating the exhibition, Tod Papageorge, Director of Graduate Studies in Photography at Yale since 1979, wrote the essay that appeared at the beginning of the exhibition catalog. The exhibition and catalog featured 50 photographs in which photographs of similar iconography and content made by Evans and Frank were paired together.

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Both books were bound in black (Evans’ in bible cloth, the cover of hymnals), and were almost the same size – American Photographs a bit taller, The Americans slightly longer, to accommodate the different shapes of their pictures. Evans’ book contained eighty-seven photographs, Franks eighty-three. And, of course, the titles of the two books – as well as the block layout of their title pages – echoed one another.

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Evans, Parked Car, Small Town Main Street, 1939 and Frank, Motorama – Los Angeles, 1956

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Many of the matched photographs reproduced here obviously, and remarkably, echo one another; they demonstrate that, to a significant degree, Frank used Evans’ work as an iconographical sourcebook for his own pictures.

In a general sense, these comparisons are meant to remind us that the true shape of influence is one composed of feeling as well as conscious recognition, an, more particularly, to suggest that Frank found in Evans’ work not only a guide to what he might photograph in America, but a vision of how he might understand what he saw here.

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Evans, Torn Movie Poster, 1930 and Frank, Elevator – Miami Beach, 1955

Evans, Negro Barber Shop Interior, Atlanta, 1936 and Frank, Barber shop through screen door – McClellanville, South Carolina, 1955

Evans, Westchester, New York, Farm House, 1931 and Frank, Covered car – Long Beach, California, 1956

Evans, Roadside View, Alabama Coal Area Company Town, 1936 and Frank, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1955

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When, in the statement he wrote shortly before The Americans was published, Frank said, “It is important to see what is invisible to others. Perhaps the look of hope or the look of sadness. Also it is alway the instantaneous reaction to oneself that produces a photograph,” he was expressing his belief that both of his perceptions (it is significant that he does not mention an intervening camera in these sentences) and the photographs which result from them are essentially unmediated and true.

This desire of Frank’s to hold the shape of his feelings in what he made is an ambition found in all Romantic art, one that his style brilliantly encompasses and describes. There is a wonderful illusion of speed trapped in his photographs, a sense of rapidity usually created not by the movement of Frank’s subjects, but by the gesture that he made as he framed his pictures. For the beauty of this gesture is that, caught by such speed, his subjects remain clear, fully recognized, as if the photographer had only glanced at what he wanted to show, but was able to seize it at the moment it unhesitantly revealed itself.

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Evans, A Bench in the Bronx on Sunday, 1933 and Frank, St. Petersburg, Florida, 1955

Evans, South Street, New York, 1932 and Frank, Public Park – Cleveland, Ohio, 1955

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Evans’ photographs, on the other hand, appear impersonal, and usually are presented as if they were just the inevitable result of a process in which someone (Evans) had found a subject (or let it find him), set up a camera (in noon light), framed the picture (centered it), and exposed his film (one sheet for each subject).

It might be thought that Evans’ use of the view camera demanded this plain style. The employment of such a camera requires at least physical deliberation since a tripod must be put in place for the machine to be used; and, because its frame is relatively square, the camera could be assumed to have been designed to directly face a centered subject.

A result of this stance is that it forces attention to the surfaces rather than to the sculptural mass of Evans’ subjects; at the same time, it is sufficiently distanced that his photographs deny us the embarrassing pleasures of pure texture. This stance also superficially suggest the specimen case, taxonomic passion, a desire to catalogue and, in some vaguely scientific way, to classify a time and place.

Lincoln Kirstein has said that Evans could wait days for the correct light to reveal his subject, a patience implied in some of his greatest works. By defining both his subjects and photography itself through the use of this irradiatin, informing light, Evans makes an identification between the two which is simple, direct, and profound. As we have seen, an effect of this identification is that the presence of the photographer is suppressed in his pictures, but of course, is at the heart of his strategy: if the artist is hidden, his choices will appear unprejudiced, equal in their gravity, and photography will be honored as the vehicle of their revelation.

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Evans, Main Street of Pennsylvania Town, 1935 and Frank, St. Francis, gas station, and City Hall, Los Angeles, 1955

Evans, Street and Graveyard in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 1936 and Frank, Crosses on scene of highway accident – U.S. 91, Idaho, 1955

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As Harold Bloom asks in The Anxiety of Influence, “what strong maker desires the realization that he has failed to create himself?”

Bloom’s question could be countered, if not answered, by T.S. Eliot’s direct propositions: “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.” Eliot’s position – according to which Frank may be called both a mature and a good poet – has the advantage of being closer than it seems Bloom’s is to the daily joys and emergencies of artistic practice, since it does not exclude the possibility of pleasure – whether the minor excitement of stealing something without fear of arrest, the deeper enhancement of loving a thing well enough to serve it, or the profound delight of making an object so free of previous authority that it can be called new.

But tangled with all of this is the dominating fact that Frank’s masterpiece was a book born of his love of another book, and that, with this – like Walker Evans – Frank has had to live with the memory of an overwhelming early triumph. As for us, we have his wonderful book, and, traced within it, the figure of a tradition.

from the catalog and essay Walker Evans and Robert Frank: An Essay On Influence by Tod Papageorge and published by Yale University Art Gallery, © 1981.

This power and anxiety of influence of Walker Evans’ American Photographs and Robert Franks’ The Americans has challenged photographers following them down the road of the American vernacular scene, including Garry Winogrands’ 1964, William Egglestons’ Los Alamos, Stephen Shores’ American Surfaces and Uncommon Places and Joel Sternfelds’ American Prospects to name a few.

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Click on the PDF to download the essay from the catalog (courtesy of Eric Etheridge):

Walker Evans and Robert Frank: An Essay On Influence by Tod Papageorge.pdf

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Assignment

Prepare and present a digital presentation (PowerPoint or Keynote) that discusses your current work, working process and the relationship of your work within the context of influence.  Include the following discussion items in your presentation:

Inspiration for making of previous work and how this has evolved | developed for current work (intellectual, emotional, considerations of memory and intuition)

Background context(s) that may be relevant to current work (previous work, personal history as well as historical, geographical, social and/or cultural contexts)

Content of work (what is it about and/or the issues you’re seeking to address)

Why current work is being explored and initial thoughts on what is to come of the work

Development and evolution of working process (conceptual development and aesthetic considerations)

Photographer(s) work that reveals the possibility of pleasure for your own photographic practice (subject matter and/or their photographic sensibilities)

Other influences relevant to current work (artists, literature, film, music, theater, current events…)

Challenging these influences to make something better, or at least something different (problems and considerations of work)

Bibliography

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