Robert Frank's photo taken in Charleston is one of 83 photos in a photojournal book called The Americans. Journeying across the US, Frank captured American citizens in the 1950s. His style of work differed from other 1950s photographers as he focused on class and race issues thriving at the time. Living in Switzerland during WWII, Robert Frank and his Jewish family saw oppression first hand. This background clearly directed him to a certain bleak stylistic approach seen in his photos. His picture taken in Charleston, South Carolina shows the subject of an African American woman holding a Caucasian baby (http://www.honoluluacademy.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/robert-frank-lapsenhoitaja.jpg). In interpreting artwork, there is no right or wrong because everyone takes his or her own background and experience to the piece. However there are different steps you can take when looking at art. David Bordwell and Kristen Thompson would argue that this picture’s emotion and feeling being brought out is because of its form and our expectations of a pattern that the art presents to us. The two people being different races and being close and unified, at first gives a calm and peaceful feel to the photo. The subjects are in focus and are in the foreground. The woman looks strong and in power as the baby shows the innocence in the picture. There is enough look space for the subjects making the image even. The photo is in black and white and although it seems as if the photo shows peace, movement and tenseness is trapped inside. The vertical lines of the wall the woman leans against are not straight up and down however they slant causing uneasiness in the picture. The two subjects are not looking at each other but into the distance; the baby looking out towards the viewer and the woman (wearing glasses) looking beyond the baby toward the out of focus side of the picture in a different direction. Both facial expressions are very stiff. The film is grainy and has a raw feel to it. By examining the photo and reevaluating it as more things are noticed, I am “actively participating” in the experience (42, Thompson). Looking at the woman she seems firm but her shirt brings fluid motion to her character with lines revolving in a maze pattern. This at first brings conflict to my initial thought of the woman being rigid. Bordwell and Thompson would say this form “worked to disturb my expectation” so that it would bring “tension” to the photo (43, Thompson). Seeing the form of the photo with the help of Bordwell and Thompson there is a torn tension between races and how the United States has this chilled perception of how races should live together in the 1950s. However by looking at Frank’s work with Sturken and Cartwright’s take on interpreting art, the photo would be less about form and active participation and more about Robert Frank and his intensions of what he wanted to get across. Through this mirror it is more important to find meaning through “when, where, and by whom” (46, Sturken). Because this photo was taken in a different generation, I take a completely different view to the photo than what the people who saw Frank’s work when it first came bring to the photo (47, Sturken). Sturken and Cartwright would also throw in ideology positions into play to help make sense of the artwork. Stuart Hall defines three positions that help make meaning of art. With this people can take Frank’s photo as it is in it’s most dominant meaning or by “dominant-hegemonic reading”- a woman holding a child on the streets in the 1950s. Or the second view as a “negotiated reading” which the person would take more notice of the fact that the woman is African American and the baby is Caucasian (57, Sturken). The last view that Hall notes is “oppositional reading” in which case the viewer goes in a complete opposite direction of the dominant meaning or the most biased view (57, Sturken). Here the viewer would say the picture has everything to do with the race of the people in the picture. This is not all we can look at Frank’s picture but also we can say that he was trying to make a political and cultural statement by using “appropriation” through using the different races of the people in a normal and calm setting (65, Sturken). Bordwell and Thompson see Frank’s work through picking apart the picture to make patterns, which give us an emotional response whereas Sturken and Cartwright think about the time convention and creator rather than the piece itself.
