“That’s My Profession, To Look”

Robert Frank died in September of 2019 and he made The New York Times Magazine’s end of year retrospective, The Lives They Lived.

This is an interesting look at his work, moving well past his seminal book, The Americans, and into some of the other work that helped pay the bills inlcuding promotional work for the Times.

All these pictures had such loose, grainy softness that the lack of concern for formal composition suggested Frank was after something else: essential human feeling extracted from the blur of life. “I saw a lot of things other people didn’t see,” Frank said. “The eyes were always fine and could always find a place of interest and zoom. That’s my profession, to look.”