Lately, in my blog posts I have been talking a lot about current photographers. For this post, I want to take a step back in time and discuss not a nature photographer, but a photographer who changed the field of photography for documentary. Robert Frank born on November 9, 1924, and died September 9, 2019, was a postmodern photographer. Frank was born and raised in Switzerland in a world that went through World War II and was dealing with the direct aftermath. Europe was hit hard by the war and was dealing with issues with, society, the economy, governments, trama, etc just to name a few. America though did not have these same problems that Europe had to, and as a result, America as a whole was thriving. It was during this time that America was presented to the rest of the world as perfect, the land of milk and honey. Everyone had the American dream of living in a house with a white picket fence, having two kids, a dog, and a consistent job. This was an idea that Frank was obsessed with when he traveled over to the states and experienced that this was not the case. This lead to him seeking to speak the truth through his work as a photographer. 
Throughout the 1950s Robert Frank road tripped all over the United States; photographing as he went.
He was unique though in what his subjects were. Up until this point photographs that were considered
documentary were staged. The subjects in the photographs were posed and the images were crisp,
sharp, and clear. There was also a type of persona that was always in photographs. Mostly white
important adults. Frank photographed people of color, teenage couples, people going about their daily
lives doing their mundane activities. His photos were real and truthful. They were not staged, no one
was posing, they were not perfectly clear, crisp, and sharp. They were sometimes blurry. Robert
Frank’s photographs were revolutionary because they showed the truth.
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