Robert Frank speaks

Photographer Robert Frank makes few public appearances. So when he did on Thursday -- at the National Gallery of Art in conjunction with the NGA's  50th anniversary exhibition of The Americans -- the line was over an hour long. A surprisingly large number of attendees were college-age students whose parents had barely been born when 'The Americans,' Frank's iconic detailing of America in the 1950s, was first published. When Frank entered the auditorium, necks craned and a certain irony became evident: Few of the assembled knew if the comfortably rumpled man in a taupe sweater, a tan shirt, and chocolate-colored trousers was the man they'd come to see. They'd never seen a photograph of him. [Image.]

Frank was joined by exhibition curator Sarah Greenough, who was prepared with notes, slides and a path that she wanted to follow: Frank's upbringing in Switzerland, his love of hiking and traveling through the Alps, his beginnings as a photographer, his emigration to the United States in 1947, his encounters with Walker Evans and Edward Steichen, his Guggenheim fellowship, 'The Americans' and a few things since. As curators are wont to do, she addressed the work from the point-of-view of Milestone, and she seemed to expect Frank to talk about the work as Cultural Touchstone.

Frank, 84, had other ideas. With Greenough's first questions about Frank's work I could almost hear Frank thinking: The work is the work. Don't fuss. It's what I did. It took Greenough a few minutes to adjust to Frank's Me, my work? and for Frank to adjust to Greenough's Me, I historicize. 

But then things picked up, in the early 1950s, when Greenough asked Frank what he hoped he could gain professionally from seeking out and meeting Edward Steichen.

"What I could gain from Steichen," Frank said and paused, apparently trying to decide exactly how he wanted to answer the question. "...was his name that he could put on a letter. He could help me get a Guggenheim fellowship!" The crowd laughed. Frank had found the room.

Greenough played along. She read from the application Frank submitted to try to earn a Guggenheim fellowship that would enable what would become 'The Americans.' Greenough told Frank that she'd received many letters from him over the years. The Guggenheim application sounded like none of them. Frank blinked back at her.

"I've got my name at the bottom of it!" he replied, incredulously. He paused again -- and let loose a sly grin. "But in fact Walker Evans wrote most of it." More laughter. Frank and Greenough were off...

Part two: Stories from The Americans, the years after, and a favorite mid-career picture. [Image: Robert Frank, Political Rally, Chicago -- 1956.]