I spoke yesterday of Andre Kertesz.  Another photographer who brings me to my knees is Robert Frank, another transplanted European photographer.  Maybe you have to come to this country as an adult to actually see America.  Look at Frank’s seminal work, “The Americans”, a classic.  Or Cartier-Bresson’s “America In Passing”.  Both of these portray America in ways that are wholly original.

The picture above is a digital sampling of Frank’s elevator operator, just her face, superimposed on a background of a billboard.  Then a rusty-grunge effect.  The overall effect is NOTHING like the work Frank did, but I have always loved the alert-but-bored expression on her face, and the grainy blurry presentation of that picture. The sly peek into someone’s life should not be sharp and focused, it should be stealthy.  It takes a while to “get” that — Frank worked in a surreptitious  manner, so his pictures are not aligned straight, perfectly exposed or sharply focused.  If they were, they would lose their value as a glimpse into a life where he would perhaps not be welcome.