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STORY LINES

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This book is not hardcover (although it is not exactly typical softcover either). Instead, it has a flexible, durable plastic cover that seems pretty unique. The book itself is a catalog from the current Robert Frank exhibit at the Tate in London, but Frank himself helped put it together and you can tell. I think it is his most exciting book in years, probably since "The Lines of My Hand," although "Moving Out" was very comprehensive. If you are already a Robert Frank fan, I suspect you will NOT be disappointed by "Storylines." If you don't know who he is, check out "The Americans" first because that is his most important book, followed by "Lines of My Hand." I've never seen a good many of the images in "Storylines" before, and I've been absorbing everything I could of Robert Frank's work since 1987, so this is a worthwhile addition to my collection.

In this book, Frank photographically explores America and Europe from 1950-2003. The book is limited in text but reads as almost a journal of Franks travels. The cities he chooses to highlight feature black and white photographs that give insight into Frank's perspective on the city. Frank covers the hazy streets of London with petty coats and top hats to soot covered coal miners of Whales to the commercialized America filled with advertisements and coffee shops. Franks photography is silent as he captures people in their element. No posed glamour shots or sun kissed landscapes, but real people in their everyday environment.

Frank's photographic style is almost documentary in respect. His photographs seem as almost proof of his whereabouts rather than an art form. Every page is filled with candid pictures like the factory workers in Detroit or the 1956 Chicago Democratic Convention. Each picture alone is not anything out of the ordinary but when bound together in a book, it becomes extraordinary.