"From the Bus"

gelatin silver print

signed and dated on recto

Robert Frank emigrated from Switzerland to the USA in 1947. In 1954, he applied for a Guggenheim Fellowship, which he was the first European to be awarded in 1955. He planned a large-scale photo reportage about the United States. The group of works The Americans, taken between 1955 and 1957, made photographic history. During his road trip through the USA, Frank documented the "American way of life" of the post-war period with unconventional, often blurred and seemingly random moments. In sometimes bleak black and white images, Robert Frank showed a less idealized, often melancholy side of America, marked by racism, violence and consumer culture. As his photos did not correspond to the self-image of the USA, the book of the same name could initially only be published in Europe. With The Americans, Frank created one of the most influential photographic works of the post-war period, which not only had a lasting impact on street photography, but also influenced generations of photographers. The Guardian wrote in 2014 that The Americans "changed the nature of photography, what it can say and how it can say it. It remains perhaps the most influential photobook of the 20th century".
In the summer of 1958, a few months before the premiere of The Americans in France, Frank began experimenting with moving images. But before he turned his full attention to filmmaking, he made another photographic series, From the Bus. After the unparalleled freedom of The Americans project, Frank narrowed his perspective considerably by taking these pictures through the window of a moving New York City bus. He photographed pedestrians walking, waiting and sometimes moving. In this way, he bridged the gap between still and moving images.
The series follows on stylistically from The Americans, but shows an even more subjective and fragmented view of society. It illustrates Frank's fascination with chance and the fleeting moments of everyday life, while maintaining a certain distance between photographer and subject. From the Bus can be interpreted as a reflection on movement, isolation and modern city life.
The image is an enlargement of an original contact print from the series. A contact print is a direct enlargement of a complete negative strip on photographic paper, so that all the shots remain visible in their original order on the film strip. This method allowed photographers to view their images in context, make comparisons and decide on the best shots. Contact prints played an essential role in The Americans, as Frank photographed more than 27,000 images and chose only 83 for his final selection. This way of working probably had a great influence on him, even though he took significantly fewer shots in the From the Bus series.
(Christoph Fuchs, translated by deepL)