Thanks, Rob. Robert Frank introduced a new branch of photography. It's roots were in Cartier-Bresson and street photographers contemporary with Henri, but Frank's work was a new departure.
I remember when The Americans came out, and I remember when Popular Photography got on Frank's case about what they felt was his insult to the United States. I never could understand that. I'm old enough to have experienced a large part of what's in The Americans. The book felt like the America I knew. History has shown that Pop Photo was wrong. Although he never actually admitted it, I think Garry Winogrand was heavily influenced by Frank, and Garry continued in the direction Frank had pointed.
These were the people who made photography an art. Ansel Adams made some great pictures for bank walls and waiting rooms, but Robert Frank, his predecessors and successors captured essences of human behavior that reveal truths about all of us. That's genuine art.
I agree, and I would add that part of the reason is that we are drawn to the human condition more than to the natural one (as in Mama Nature's bounty).
It will not be good news to many, but the photography of humans beats that of ARAT for the simple reason that we can identify, deeply, with human images but only go wow! ooh! or my! to the other sorts. As bad (or controversially), ARAT depends mostly on factors well beyond our control but human interaction can be both ways: directed as well as stolen. A little harmless petty crime goes a long way to inspiring excited delight!
I've just spent a while prior to clocking in here looking for the umpteenth time at a collection somebody made of Jean Shrimpton pictures. Those shots tell the history of an era, its fashions and the looks that made hearts pound in dozens of studios across the world. I don't think
Moonrise ever did much of that... Folks love folks. One can see the mess Americans made of her: they just didn't get the entire thing. They piled her up with massive false hair extensions etc. etc. and it wan't even good enough to be parody. Twiggy didn't fare much better. (Ironically, the very best portrait of her I've yet seen came from Saul Leiter! Bailey has a sort of similar one too...) Another example of nations divided by common language
and magazines.
Incidentally,
Popular Photography Annual got Saul Leiter absolutely right when they titled their paean to him
A Painter's View of New York all those years ago.
So, why do we consider paintings of ARAT to be art, but very seldom, with exceptions, of course, photography of ARAT? I think because, in the end, photography comes out of facility with a mechanical device, whereas painting needs far much more than good mechanical aids. And in the opposite direction, I don't think painting does the best job of presenting people. Yes, of course, some artists can make highly evocative pictures of humans, and Freud and Bacon can both concentrate the mind wonderfully, but when paint tries to make people look good, it becomes saccharine or obsequious.
Somebody whose name unfortunately now escapes me remarked that he'd trade every painting of Christ for a single photograph.
Rob