Postcards from the Road

Jonathan Day

Description

Walker Evans said in his 1958 introduction to Robert Frank’s The Americans, 'For the thousandth time, it must be said that pictures speak for themselves, wordlessly, visually, or they fail.' The images revolutionized post-war American photography. With their candid images of men and women from all classes and walks of life, the photographs presented a very different story than that portrayed by the wholesome caricature of midcentury prosperity pervading American photography at the time. Although initially dismissed by his peers for his pioneering work, Frank was ultimately credited with changing the course of the art form, and his photography holds a secure status in the history of twentieth-century art. And he did all this without words. It seems appropriate then – and not a little overdue – that Jonathan Day has created a book that expounds, explores and examines Frank’s work pictorially. 

 

Taking Frank’s iconic images as his point of reference, Day shot new photographs that commented on the road and contemporary America. Here, these images are paired with critical commentary that details the aspects of the work that are visually expounded and explained in Day’s complementary images. A visual entryway to the photographs and themes of this iconic book in the history of photography, Postcards from the Road represents an innovative, carefully considered departure from standard photographic textbooks.

Sujets

• Loisirs
• Histoire de la photographie
• Photographie
• Photographie
• History
• General
• Photography
• General officer
• Criticism
• Individual Photographers

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783202812
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 29 Mo

Extrait

J O N AT H A N D AY

P O S T C A R D S F R O M T H E R O A D

R O B E RT F R A N K ’ S ‘ T H E A M E R I C A N S ’

P O S T C A R D S F R O M T H E R O A D

P O S T C A R D S F R O M T H E R O A D

R O B E RT F R A N K ’ S ‘ T H E A M E R I C A N S ’

J O N AT H A N D AY

intellectBristol, UK / Chicago, USA

Fîrs pubîsed în e UK în 2014 by ïneec, He Mî, Parna Road, Fîsponds, Brîso, BS16 3JG, UK

Fîrs pubîsed în e USA în 2014 by ïneec, He Unîversîy o Cîcago Press, 1427 E. 60 Sree, Cîcago, ï 60637, USA

Copyrîg © 2014 Jonaan Day

A rîgs reserved. No par o îs pubîcaîon may be reproduced, sored în a re- rîeva sysem, or ransmîed, în any orm or by any means, eecronîc, mecanîca, poocopyîng, recordîng, or oerwîse, wîou wrîen permîssîon.

A caaogue record or îs book îs avaîabe rom e Brîîs îbrary.

Cover îmage: © Jonaan Day, 2014

Cover desîgner: oy Rose and Sepanîe Saros Producîon managers: Tîm Eameer and Tom Newman Copy-edîor: îsa Cordaro Typeseîng: Sepanîe Saros

ïSBN 978-1-78320-186-0 ePDF ïSBN 978-1-78320-281-2 ePUB ïSBN 978-1-78320-282-9

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my ship it leaves tomorrow shallow oh shallow brown and it fills my heart with sorrow shallow oh shallow brown miss Beverley is feeding oysters shallow oh shallow brown to the twinkleeyed filthy travellers road dirty and full of grace in Mobile the cranes are rusting shallow oh shallow brown on a chrome and eggshell morning as the seafoam green gulf curls quietly the shrimp boats their nets unfurling on dragonfly wings they’re sailing while Jesus’ red heart is burning for the mud brown levees that could not hold in the Clover Grill a half man is toasting meat against the darkness so I run to the Christ’s blood mountains and the high white church of kindness a triangle sun is setting for Daniella’s baby, dying quietly the most beautiful girl child is sitting on a miner’s tomb, she does not understand in the wide plains of Nebraska I sleep among the unquiet dead on their warm beasts dressed in buckskin or the snow white covered wagons forever lost so I cling to Stella Maris and the Virgin of Guadeloupe desperately hoping I’ll make it home again

6 Postcards from the Road

Introduction

INTRODUCTION

I have for a long time been fascinated by the photographs in Robert Frank’s bookThe Americans. They shine a searchlight back onto a time that is lost to us now, staring mutely out of the pages. The book was published in the year I was born: it helps explain my world. No surprise, then, that I should set out to search for the remnants of the America he pictured, to see how 50 years have changed it—what has gone and what remains. Jack Kerouac, too, has been so important. HisOn the Roadwas a lifeaffirming text for me as someone already travel ling, already on my own road, when I encountered his. Through him I noticed others of the ‘Beats’, and their world view seemed to chime with mine, sharing an interest in Zen and an appreciation of music and painting. I wanted to see what lasting effect their freewheeling rhetoric and often radical lives had on America. Was there any real trace of them left in its warp and weft? Or are they consigned to the footnotes of history—like the quirkySan Fran Beat Museum, an occasional TV documentary and the lessthanspectacular reception of the recentOn the Road cinema release? This isn’t my first book aboutThe Americans. My first one was wordy, with even some bestseller appearances in a few countries around the world. I like it, but I wanted to do something—not more exactly, but different. I’m a maker as well as a writer, and thereby hangs a tale. Many of my visually creative friends view text with extreme caution. Acres of the printed word leave them skittish and uncertain. A good number of them take it further, reacting with something like fear to the sight of a pictureless book. It’s not that they are philistine or uninformed: they will discuss and weigh an argument for hours and with precision. It is something about those serried pages, waiting in line for consideration, that has them running for the door. So I wanted to make a book that tunnelled beneath them, like mediaeval pioneers undermining a wall, mollified the danger and threat, opened its arms and drew them, warm and cuddly, in. This is it. Pictures and words, even handed—not illustrations serving text, or captions serving images—hand in hand the two, instead, in hierarchical equality. The structure follows Frank’s: radical, nonlinear, enter where you like and make your own journey through this little snow globe America. Treat it like a pensieve, the alchemists’ future reflecting mirror. Look in and see if you can find yourself there, smiling back. For this to make sense, you’ll never have to read more than two or three pages at a time. The Americans is a complicated book. The photographs are often part of interconnected sequences examining the nature of human love, for example, or the imagery of the cross. At the same time, many of them contribute to nonconsecutive thematic considerations—the car, for instance, or the Stars and Stripes. These devices work architecturally, knitting the book together like the interwoven trunks of a yew tree or the convoluted fibres in jade. Extracting and presenting these threads is a difficult business, and I think maybe the book you’re holding does it most transparently. All the ideas are here gathered together, hanging on the meat hooks of the pictures. These photographs were taken in America, over a period of years andperhaps 20,000 miles of road. They react to Frank’s originals, sometimes taken in the same place, but mostly not. He was searching for moments, things which caught his eye, ways of talking about the world. I knew I wasn’t going to find them in the same places—although I did, actually, once or twice. I thought about his messages, glass bottled and arcane, and how time has changed things—looked for the impressions he and the Beats made, or at their absence, the negative American space where they used to stand. Each picture has a commentary, a story of its making, a postcard from the road. Also a section about Robert’s photo graph—the one that inspired me, to which I react. His pictures are not here, which I think is as it should be. They areavail able cheaply in the excellent Steidl facsimile, or online, for free. The order of presentation is the same as inThe Americans, so if you know it well the progression should be plain.

8 Postcards from the Road