The Life of the Characters in robert frank's Works

Frank 1924 was born in Zurich, Switzerland. He began to work in the field of photography in Switzerland at the age of 16 and received strict professional training in photography. As soon as he arrived in new york, he found a job as a photographer. This is due to his solid photography training in Switzerland. He got the job of taking fashion photos in Harper's Market, a famous fashion magazine. The artistic director of this magazine is Alexei Brodovich, a famous American magazine at that time. He resigned after only half a year in this enviable job. Although this is related to the temporary closure of Harper's market, it is also related to his inability to agree with fashion photography. Frank, who has a deep personality and loves hype, can't feel the attraction of fashion photography that only pays attention to superficial visual effects. And the worship of money for the purpose of American fashion and even the whole country in the United States made him unbearable. As a result, he resolutely quit the fashion photography industry and started his life as a freelance photographer. Obviously, this is a decision that requires courage.

As a freelance photographer, he basically has the possibility to choose his own subject matter freely except shooting some necessary photography orders to solve his livelihood. At this time, the daily life of people in new york, a modern metropolis, the relationship between modern cities and urbanites, and the charm of the city itself have become the first choice for this photographer who is essentially concerned about people's living conditions. Compared with new york, a distant and indifferent European metropolis, it obviously gives him a complex and fresh feeling for a person who struggles here alone. How to express your feelings about the city through images is not only a photographer's obligation and instinct, but also an important issue closely related to the photographer's living posture in the city. His photography of this city is also a way to solve his relationship with this strange city. By photographing the city, he needs to confirm his role and position in the city and gain a lifestyle and wisdom in the city. Frank's photographic creed is that "what is captured in an instant, expressed in a freer form, is more important than what is on the surface of the photo". He not only wants to shoot things, but also liberates things through his own shooting, so that things can gain independent character and become the proof of the photographer's freedom to watch. In this sense, the photographer is essentially a liberator. He liberated himself and his thoughts while liberating the object.

No matter which city he is in, Frank always tries to find a theme corresponding to the cultural temperament of the city and his own mood for the city. He photographed the flowers and chairs in Paris, and grasped the characteristics of Paris as a leisure and sightseeing destination through these two cultural images. In London, he photographed all kinds of lonely and deserted scenes, and also showed a gentleman's reserve and alienation. His cold poetic heart and lonely temperament make him particularly sensitive to the abnormal alienation of modern cities. He can only release his loneliness by communicating with some objects. As a result, his special vision gave some unremarkable things and scenes a special sense of life and significance, and gave them a special existence value. His special perspective makes people find that all the scenery in the world has unique and profound significance to the eyes, time and space of a unique photographer, which is not easy to ignore or discover. Through Frank's concern, we can re-understand the world and people themselves in this city. He used his own photos to show that the city is the best place for him to show his rich sensibility. Compared with his contemporary American photographer William Klein's unrestrained and impulsive photography, Frank's photography is relatively stable, gentle and unpretentious. If Klein's photography is reckless hostility and attack on the city, then Frank's photography is the result of careful taste of various flavors of urban life. As far as their action style is concerned, Klein belongs to the active attack type, through which he seized what he needed; Frank, on the other hand, belongs to the latent type, and his photos are the result of looking on coldly.

The photography of Frank and his contemporary william klein is an important turning point for contemporary western photographers. Their urban photography can be included in the category of documentary photography, but unlike their previous documentary photography, their photographic discourse no longer has a grand narrative style based on the universal values of western humanism, but a personal narrative style based on their own feelings and experiences. In essence, their video discourse is a query to the meta-discourse of "turning to a great narrative (in the language of Jean-Fran? ois Olita) such as spiritual dialectics, meaning hermeneutics, the liberation of rational subject or labor subject, and the growth of wealth". Their documentary works are not aimed at expounding a universal concept, but personal speeches based on personal life experience and focusing on the reality of personal life. It is a rebellion against the unified values, a desire and call for diversity, and a confrontation with the dull American reality that McCarthyism ruled the country in an image way at that time. The images of Frank and Klein share a common spiritual feature with the "Beat Generation" at that time, that is, they have strong doubts about the "virtue" of the United States blindly pursuing "progress", "strength" and "material". The appearance of documentary photography from their personal standpoint prepared for Diana Abbas's "new documentary" style in 1960s and Nan Goldin's private documentary style in 1980s.