In the mid-1950s, a photographer named Robert Frank, lately emigrated from Switzerland, drove around the United States to see and to join his new country. He shot pictures. The results, or his choices among them, were published in a book of eighty-three photos called The Americans, which was an immediate and lasting success. The book was not only a unique way for a newcomer to learn about his new home: in some ways it showed a social candor that was as yet unusual in photography. In his introduction to the book, Jack Kerouac wrote: "Robert Frank, Swiss, unobtrusive, nice, with that little camera that he raises and snaps with one hand he sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film." We can still look over Frank’s shoulder and see that poem in the making.
Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before
By Michael Fried (Yale University Press, 409 pp., $55)
I.
Michael Fried,who shot to intellectual stardom in 1967 with an essay in Artforum called "Art and Objecthood," is an intimidating writer. He looks very closely. He has passionate feelings about what he sees. And he shapes his impressions into a theory that fits snugly with all the other theories he has ever had. Whatever his chosen subject--Diderot, Courbet, Manet, Kenneth Noland--he comes up with an interpretation that is as smoothly and tightly constructed as a stainless-steel box. His writing amounts to a set of matching stainless-steel boxes. He puts potential critics on notice that the best they can hope to do is leave a few fingerprints or scratches on these perfectly polished surfaces. And so many people back away. Fried wants us to feel that we could as easily demolish the Great Pyramid of Giza with a pick-axe as successfully question his interpretations of his chosen themes--which now include the art of the camera, in his new book, Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before. This is Fried's first extended foray into photography, and although it was a subject of discussion in academic circles even before it appeared, it has not received the more general attention that it deserves. Fried brings audacious arguments to old controversies about the relationship between art and photography. I find the arguments troubling, even wrongheaded, but only a man with a bold, wide-ranging, and fearless mind could have dreamed such stuff up.
In my review about the resurgence of Ayn Rand-ism on the right, I cited an op-ed by Cornell economist Robert Frank. I called Frank's central point, that luck plays a huge role in success, "seemingly banal." It occurs to me -- I haven't heard from Frank or anybody about this point -- that that line sounded dismissive. I didn't intend it that way at all.
