© Robert Frank, 1955, City Fathers (Hoboken)
ANSWER FOR PHOTO QUIZ #6
The original image was Robert Frank’s photograph “City Fathers” of the famous “The Americans” series. Congratulations to firsttimeuser & chagalov for coming up with the right answer!
THE QUESTION WAS:
The protagonists of this famous photograph have been airbrushed away, leaving only the background (& some other detail) of the original image. Can you recognize this famous shot?
(see Photo Quiz #6)
Find out more about the project “Less Américains” by London-based artist Mishka Henner on TIME LightBox.
Henner takes his humorous title from the French Edition of Frank’s book “Les Américains”, published in 1958 by Robert Delpire in Paris. By scanning and applying Photoshop to Frank’s images, Henner has proceeded to remove most of the vital subject matter from all 83 photographs—leaving only small details hovering around the frame like background props on an empty theater stage.
© Robert Frank, 1954, Arm and Bible, Times Square, New York
“If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version)
(thanks to / via: mpdrolet)
© Robert Frank, 1960s, William S. Burroughs as ‘Opium Jones’
Set in the small New York town of the same name, Conrad Rooks’s 1966 film ‘Chappaqua’ is a counterculture classic. A forgotten psychedelic-era explorer, Rooks was the son of Avon Corporation’s CEO and an associate of numerous legendary beat figures. Shocked into the futility of an existence dependent on alcohol and drugs and funded by an inheritance following his father’s sudden death, Rooks decided to make a film about his own drug treatments in Switzerland as a way of keeping himself clean.
Largely improvised, Chappaqua unfolds as a series of fragmented visual trips, with outrageous cinematic effects, as the protagonist undergoes a mysterious ‘sleep treatment’. Chappaqua stars William Burroughs as Opium Jones, the ‘spirit of heroin’, with cameos by Allen Ginsberg, Moondog, Ornette Coleman, and The Fugs (performing at a New York acid party, stomping on sugar cubes that spell out ‘LSD’).
It was shot by the great American photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank, and its score was written by Ravi Shankar and Philip Glass.
© Robert Frank, ca. 1949, ‘Horse and Sun’ / Peru
“Black and white are the colors of photography. To me they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected.” (Robert Frank)
