This year is the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Americans, the photo collection by Robert Frank which changed contemporary photography profoundly.  A new edition of the book is being released in a few weeks and I’ve already pre-ordered my copy from Amazon.  Most critics agree that Franks’ influence has been felt by essentially every, or at least every American, photographer who has come after him.  One went so far as to say that he was the last person to look through a viewfinder and see anything new.  High praise for him, but a bit depressing for the rest of us. 

I am a believer in photography as art, I truly am.  But I find myself questioning the mechanical nature of the medium with great regularity.  The fact that one can capture complex imagery in a fraction of a second, often not even being aware of the true contents of the image until it is examined at leisure later on, introduces a disturbing lack of artistic intentionality into the process.  I was furthur disturbed to learn that the 83 images that make up The Americans were selected from 28,000 photos Frank took over the course of one year.  That works out to one keeper in every 337 images.  I wonder if I set up a camera on a tripod at a promising location and just randomly tripped the shutter 337 times if I would end up with one sterling, rich image out of that collection.  Garry Winogrand was famous for burning rolls of film, when he died there were about 250,000 images he had taken but had not yet developed and/or proofed.  Is it in large part a numbers game?  Maybe that is one way to approach it.  Contrast that with a photographer like Ansel Adams, who was very intentional and controlled in the making of his photographs – using a view camera kind of forces you to be.  Adams was a very different sort of photographer than Frank or Winogrand.  His equipment, subject matter and approach were all almost diametrically opposed to the ethos of the “street photographer” that Frank and, certainly, Winograd followed. 

So what it comes down to is I’m not really sure how to fit some of these facts into my understanding of the meaning of photography as an art form.  I am comforted, however, to discover that Frank once wore a single pair of pants every day for 3 years straight.  That has to count for something.