I’m on Week 2 of an 8-week creative photography course at Garage Studios. This week we looked at Robert Frank and his book The Americans, £17.97 from Amazon. It is one of the most famous photo book narratives. Like Garry Winnogrand (see last week’s entry) he shot spontaneously. In fact, Winnogrand was inspired by Robert Frank.

At the untrained eyes first glance the photos seem not great. But Kevin Mason, our tutor pointed out that Frank’s shots have great framing even if they’re not technically great. He shot 28,000 photos and distilled it down to 83 for his book, The Americans.

America wasn’t ready for it at the time and it was published in France first. The world was used to formal staged photos, which these certainly weren’t.

Many of the photos show the difference between people, especially social class or he captures the less obvious thing. Above all his framing is top class, using objects in the surroundings to make a point. If he had taken the photo from the other side of the tree, would it say as much about society as it does?

Have I entered the realm of photographers’ nonsense here? Can the layman appreciate these photos as much?