ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS ROAD SHOW The journey of Robert Prank’s “The Americas.” ‘n June, 1955, Robert Frank bought a cat Irwasa Ford Business Coupe, five yeats ald, sold by Ben Schulz, of New ‘Yorks From there, Frank drove by him- self to Detroit, where he visited the Ford River Rouge plant, in Dearborn, 2s if taking the coupe home to se its fimily Later that cummes, he headed south to Savannah, and, with the coming of fll, set off frorn Miami Beach to St. Peters bag, and then struck out on a long, di versionary loop to New Orleans, and thence to Houston, for a rendezvous with his wife, Mary, and their two ctl dren, Pablo and Andrea. Together, they ‘went west, arriving in Los Angeles in the nick of Christmastime. They stayed con the Pacific Coast until May of the following yeas, when Mary and the chil- tren returned to New York. Frank, how- ever, tll wamt done. Alone again, he sade the trip back, going via Reno and Salt Lake Ciry, then poshing norh on BY ANTHONY LANE US. 91 to Butte, Montana. From there, vasa deep curve, though a swift one, through Wyoming, Nebraska, and Iowa to Chicago, where he tured south; at last, by early June, Frank and his Ford Business, his partner for ten thousand miles, were back in New York. It had been a year, more or les, since he em- barked, and there was much to reflect ‘upon, Luckily, he'd taken afew photo- saplas along the way In fact, he took azound twenty-seven thousand. There were more than seven hundred and sity rolls of film o develop: an impressive tally, ven to snap-happy profigates ofthe digital age. Then there ‘were contact sheets to print and marieup; from those, he made thousand work prints, which were tacked tothe walls of his apartment on Third Avenue, near ‘Tenth Street, or laid flat on the floor for closer inspection, before being whited down to a hundred, The final count, Som all those months on the soad, was eighty-three pictures: enough fora slim book, which was published in Novem= ber, 1958, in Pars, as “Les Améicains” and here, in January, 1960, a8 "The Americans.” For his pains, Frank was paid two hundred dollars in advance, 3 sum that rose to just over eight hundred and seventeen dollars by the end of the year, By then, the book was out af print. And now look ati. Back on the walls again, not of his apartment—t eighty- four, he divides his time between New Yorkand Nova Scotia—but ofthe Met- ropolitan Museun of Art, where “Look ing i: Robert Frank’s The Americans” runs from September 22nd through Jan- uaty 3rd, Before that, it showed at the San Franciseo Museum of Moder Art and, back in January, at the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, where Sarah Greenough, the senior curator of photographs, put together the exhibition ‘Drug Store—Desroit” (1955), opposite, and Frank in 1956, To the earliest viewers of "The Americans," be eas the enemy within.and edited the catalogue—a beast of a book, more than five hundred pages Jong, stacked with a dozen essays, repro~ ductions of letters and contact shects, caily Frank, ate Frank, and, most heip- fully, a map. Inside every fat volume, of in one i signalling quietly to get out, and, tucked away inside this hulk ot even starting until page 208, is the source ofthe fuss: the original pic- ‘ures, ofa bumished black-and-white, in all their roaring silence. Here, for example, is Butte, which Frank reached in May, 1956. Nota hu- man in sight, though the imprint of human activity could hardly be more pro~ nounced: 2 row of receding tools and a line of carson a cloth-gray street, a the end of which, in softer, penciled tones, come the disfigured slopes of a copper ‘mine, Drawing the ee, toward the top, is aplumeofbright smoke, and, framing the whole design, as translucent asa bridal veil are two thin patches of drape left and right: "View fiom Hotel Window,” the tite reads, and we realize thas here i our human aftr all. We are sharing the gaze ot just of Robert Frank but ofevery tav= cllee who has ever woken in an unfamiliar town, moved blearily to the light, and shivered atthe depths of his umwelcome (Others have tasted the same bleakness Flowered curtains, thin and frayed, Fallto within five ince ofthe sil ‘Whose window shows a strip of building Tend, Tussoaky tered, ‘Thatisfrom"MrBleney” composed by Philip Larkin n che year before Frank’ stay in Butte, and, with its masings on a ‘man who ‘lay on the fasty bed / Telling himself that this was home,” it accords with the gloomy, monkish pleasure, 28 bitter asold marmalade, that Englishmen, cof a certain bent have aways taken in the Spartan deficiencies of their land. But Frank was in Americe, on the verge of Eisenhower's second term, when the deficient was not to be relished but re- deemed and made good, just consider the nest photograph in the sequence: uspop- ulated, again, and filled to the brim with the window grid of the Metropolitan Life building, in New York. In front of us, at strocelove, isa vender’ rackof magazines, their names alight with exhortation and plaudits See, Whisper, Tan, Amazing, Farx ‘asic. (Anul is that really one called Gay 86 THE NEW TOMER, SEPTEMBER, 12,2000 Love, tucked in below a book of cr words?) Bottom right is U.S. News & World Repor, with its infinitely consoling headline: “1KE'S PLAN'TO AVOID A WAR, ‘The question to be asked of Robert Frank was whether he and his photo- graphs, with their cool and color-free stares, had by design set out to disturb the peace. The cops certainly thought so in ‘McGehee, Arkansas. On November 7, 1955, two patrol cars stopped him on USS. 65. They checked his registration and his luggage, then drove him to the «ity jail and locked hien up. Frank, vriting ‘wo days later to his friend and mentor Walker Evans, takes up the story: “Thae was 12:30 pat. I did ask, iT could have some coffz (I had nothing to ent since 6 Av that day) but the answer was that if Twould aot be quiet they would teach me how to be quiet.” The patrolmen dida't like the look of this guy, or the sound of him, of the fifth of Hennessy they found in his glove compartment (“Foreign whiskey,” Frank wrote, mixing his drinks), He was fingerprinted and asked to hand over his rolls of exposed film, Which he refused to do, Years late, he re called the exchange with the authorities “Wharate you doing here?" have 4 Guge olaship” "Who's Guggenheim Framniecnte a problem, fo the Arkansas police and then, when “The Americans” came out, forthe cit cs, Like his brandy, he was foreign. He ‘was a Swiss Jew, bom in Zurich in 1924 toa Swiss mother and a German father, and thus of ever more precatious status as his first twenty years unfolded, even in a rniddle-class family under the wing of a neutral state, Not long after the war ended, he lef. “I didn't know exactly what T wanted, but I sure knew what 1 didrit want.” (Another judgment was nct: “How can one be Swiss? His boat docked in New Yorke in the spring of 1947, a time and place that must rank as one of histonys better cares forrestlessness, “Coming to Ametica felt like the door opened—you were fee,” he told British television crew in 2004, sil buoyed by the liberty more than half a century later, On that maiden trip, he bore with him the fuits ofa rigorous ap- prenticeship with Swiss photographers: a private book entitled “40 Fotos,” not published but spiral-bound, and strong “Belle Isle, Detroit” (1955), We should not Bele ‘nough to win hima stafjob with Alexey Brodovitch, the art director of Harper's Bazaar and a demigod of energy, equipped with a fearsome eye. Maybe, retrospect, it wast such a good iden to head south, in 1955, with an admsiting reference from a fellow with a Russian name. You didn't get many Brodoxitches in McGehee. As Frank told Evans Thelieutenan eand back and said: Now wwe are going to ask you a question: Ave you A commie? said no, He sad, Do you know ‘what a commie i? Tsid ps, Brodovitch was one of five supporters {for an application that Frank submnied to the John Simon Guggeaheins Foun-