This rare interview with Robert Frank, described as 'the worlds greatest living photographer', is filmed on his 80th birthday in New York in 2005.
He talks about the place and area where he lives, which has become 'poison', 'the yuppies are taking over, I don't want to live among them'. As a young boy he wanted to take pictures instead of attending school, leaving Switzerland as a young man, which he described leaving as 'like a door opening'.
He was drawn to strong images and sought to take this kind of image. He had a love of Paris, with a particular affection for the images he took of the flower stalls around Paris, appreciating the sentimentality portrayed in the images. He didn't get the same feeling in America, he talks of the 'feeling' of an area or image. London is where he took 'classy' pictures, people who didn't pay attention to his photo taking, a wonderful setting for a photographer which unfortunately isn't the same today.
Paris 1949 - flowers
He felt that America had no romanticism and could be a lonely place, a tough place without money, definitely a place for people with money. Working in his first job with Harpers Bazar he found he didn't learn to hate America, but learned how people can be, and, with a brain and feeling for people, you could be a good photographer. 'The pictures have to talk - not me', I got the feeling that he didn't really like to talk a great deal and preferred to express himself through his photography. He found for him, the 'nail in the coffin' for photography was commercialism, 'everybody wants a piece of the pie and it gets diluted and mass produced'.
Disillusioned by this he moved onto film making, which, he says taught him to communicate, as when taking pictures there wasn't always the need to talk, films requiring communication and intuition. I feel that photography, for me anyway, requires a certain level of intuition, I've learn't to look at my images and almost instantly say 'yes' or 'no', and when out taking photo's I take much less images than I first took, preferring to take in the atmosphere and try to look for the ever elusive 'moment'.
Moving to Nova Scotia changed the way he worked, surrounded by the barren landscape. He tried to take photo's to show 'how it feels to be here'. His film making leading him to make many successful films including a documentary with the rolling stones.
Robert Frank talked frequently about feeling, intuition and people, feeling how people were and capturing it as a moment or a story. At the beginning of the documentary I thought he seemed quite a grumpy & generally quite negative person, but by the end I felt he was a torture soul, the death of both his children, his son's mental illness obviously left it's scars.
I particularly enjoyed Robert Frank's images of Paris. I'm always attracted to symmetry, something not only in photography but also in everyday life, everyday life which now encompasses photography, I appreciate symmetry, lines, shapes, things don't have to have symmetry in relation to the frame but just to show it somehow, like an invisible mirror put there to attract the attention of the viewer, something interesting.
Paris 1952
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