Black and White Photography
Robert Frank Series

Spring/1985

One of our assignments in my Intro to Photography class was to present a series of photos based on the photography of Robert Frank. Mr. Frank shot lots of americana and would organize his photos in "chapters", with a symbol in a photo (usually an american flag) denoting the beginning of each chapter.

I did my series by shooting about 3 rolls of film, developing most of them to prints, then sitting down in my dorm room with all of the prints in front of me. I eventually came up with the series as it's shown here, but i had no preconceived notion of what anything was going to be about.

There were 3 students with projects done on the day that i hung my photos up. Dick Rogers, the teacher, spent a few minutes on the first series, a few more minutes on the next, then the entire rest of the class on mine. And for about the first 40 minutes, i didn't say a thing. The class all discussed the series and where the breaks were and everything about the subjects and images. It was pretty weird, but pretty cool.

So, i'll let you decide for yourself:

• How many chapters are there?
• What signifies the beginning of a chapter?
• What is each chapter about?