A Man Entering America With a Camera
Frieze|Issue 243 - May 2024
Robert Frank at 100: in the last years of his life, it seemed a plausible enough prospect.
Brian Dillon
A Man Entering America With a Camera

So many great, mid-20th-century photographers appear to have been blessed with a more or less productive longevity, not quite explained by active lives spent hefting around camera equipment. For a long time, it was possible to be surprised that some legend of the medium was still going, perhaps still making work, or had died only recently, within what felt like the compass of the contemporary. Henri Cartier-Bresson, William Klein, Helen Levitt and Irving Penn all lived into their 90s, dying in a new century whose vantage made their best-known images seem like monuments we walk past every day. We might say the same about Frank, who died in 2019, aged 94, six decades after the publication of his most famous work. Except that Frank had long ago killed off the young photographer who made The Americans (1958), and become several different artists instead.

This story is from the Issue 243 - May 2024 edition of Frieze.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.

This story is from the Issue 243 - May 2024 edition of Frieze.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.

MORE STORIES FROM FRIEZEView All
I'm trying to follow my instinct: to have confidence and not get into my head too much about what other people are expecting.'
Frieze

I'm trying to follow my instinct: to have confidence and not get into my head too much about what other people are expecting.'

Conversation: Ahead of a solo show at London’s Cubitt Gallery, Marlene Smith speaks to Lubaina Himid about her time in the BLK Art Group, friendship and collaboration

time-read
8 mins  |
Issue 243 - June - August 2024
Tell It Slant
Frieze

Tell It Slant

Built Environment: Giovanna Silva on photographing history through unexpected architectural interventions

time-read
2 mins  |
Issue 243 - June - August 2024
Dean Sameshima
Frieze

Dean Sameshima

What does it mean to be alone? In Dean Sameshima’s recent body of work – 25 monochrome photographs of queer men in Berlin porn theatres with sumptuous black negative spaces and blinding white cinema screens – ‘alone’ is a complicated term.

time-read
2 mins  |
Issue 243 - June - August 2024
Nicole Wermers
Frieze

Nicole Wermers

Nicole Wermers’s Reclining Female #6 (2024) looks out over Glasgow.

time-read
2 mins  |
Issue 243 - June - August 2024
Greater Toronto Art 2024
Frieze

Greater Toronto Art 2024

Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto, Canada

time-read
2 mins  |
Issue 243 - June - August 2024
Echoes of the Brother Countries
Frieze

Echoes of the Brother Countries

In recent years, the former German Democratic Republic (DDR) has been the subject of a reappraisal that, while not seeking to redeem the stiflingly authoritarian state, has attempted to present a more nuanced overview of its social and cultural realities.

time-read
2 mins  |
Issue 243 - June - August 2024
Pierre Huyghe
Frieze

Pierre Huyghe

A pale tetra fish swims around a vast obsidian tank, while another bobs on its side at the top of the water, perhaps ailing from debilitating swim bladder disease (Circadian Dilemma [El Día del Ojo], 2017).

time-read
4 mins  |
Issue 243 - June - August 2024
Inward Yearnings
Frieze

Inward Yearnings

Essay: Rianna Jade Parker retraces the history of the Jamaican intuitives, a group of self-taught artists who ushered in a national form of artmaking mythologizing African traditions through religious divination and esteem-raising cultural work

time-read
8 mins  |
Issue 243 - June - August 2024
The Promise of the Past
Frieze

The Promise of the Past

Built Environment: On the occasion of the ‘Tropical Modernism’ exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Derin Fadina examines the architectural movement’s exclusionary narratives

time-read
5 mins  |
Issue 243 - June - August 2024
Where Is Everyone?
Frieze

Where Is Everyone?

Built Environment: Minoru Nomata’s paintings ask why we obsess over unpeopled architecture

time-read
3 mins  |
Issue 243 - June - August 2024