"He Didn’t Mainstream"

"Born in 1924 to a bourgeois family in Switzerland, Frank moved to the U.S. in 1947 and trained in fashion and magazine photography before rejecting both. His mentor, Walker Evans (Woody Guthrie to Frank’s Dylan), helped him secure a Guggenheim fellowship in 1955, and Frank traveled the country for a year, shooting 767 rolls of film—more than 27,000 images. From those he produced approximately 1,000 work prints, over which he pored for another year until achieving the singular concision of The Americans."

Karen Schoemer in New York previews Looking In: Robert Frank’s 'The Americans,' an upcoming exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (and similar to a current exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art).