Exposition

Postcards from the Road etc (last edited: 2020)

Jonathan Day
open exposition

About this exposition

This body of work takes as its centre Robert Frank's seminal 1959 text 'The Americans'. The work then re traces his American journeys, capturing new images that engage in dialogue with Frank's originals, image for image. Frank's mentor Walker Evans said in his 1958 introduction to Robert Frank’s book (later replaced), “For the thousandth time, it must be said that pictures speak for themselves, wordlessly, visually, or they fail.” Postcards from the Road honours this intention, combining these new images with accounts of their coming into being (a 'hook' to catch the attention of visual thinkers and students and offer a transition) and a novel critical reading of Frank's inspirational originals, sing rare, out of print and no longer available materials. The publisher writes Robert Frank's images revolutionized postwar American photography. With their candid images of men and women from all classes and walks of life, the photographs presented a very different story than that portrayed by the wholesome caricature of midcentury prosperity pervading American photography at the time. Although initially dismissed by his peers for his pioneering work, Frank was ultimately credited with changing the course of the art form, and his photography holds a secure status in the history of twentieth-century art. And he did all this without words. It seems appropriate then – and not a little overdue – that Jonathan Day has created a book that expounds, explores, and examines Frank’s work pictorially. Taking Frank’s iconic images as his point of reference, Day shot new photographs that commented on the road and contemporary America. Here, these images are paired with critical commentary that details the aspects of the work that are visually expounded and explained in Day’s complementary images. A visual entryway to the photographs and themes of this iconic book in the history of photography, Postcards from the Road represents an innovative, carefully considered departure from standard photographic textbooks. The book was called '“Seductive, complex and poetic: one of this years most exciting photobooks' by ArtNews New York, “Expansive, intelligent and eloquent” South China Morning Post and “a captivating and beautiful book of life on the road, which reminds us how fascinating it can be to view the world around us from an outsiders perspective.” Following on from the book a journal article for Aalto University Press, Helsinki discusses "The Photographic Book as Power-Play", using Frank's book as one of a series of examples. A further article for Take on Art, Dehli's journal Take on Photography looks at the genesis of the approach and its results. This was released at Art Basle Hong Kong. A gallery and lecture tour was undertaken featuring images from the book, including the prestigious JCCAC in Hong Kong. The author was invited to discuss The Americans and Frank's contribution after his death for TFT television to a global audience of 150 million people.
typeresearch exposition
date13/11/2020
last modified26/11/2020
statusin progress
share statuspublic
affiliationUniversity of Chicago Books
copyrightJonathan Day
licenseAll rights reserved
languageBritish English
urlhttps://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/1044964/1044965
external linkhttps://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/P/bo18075216.html


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