Who could blame them ? This place is awesome. Washington and his boys followed suit and decided they liked the place more than they did their own homes.
He was not the first to, 'discover,' America.
He did not flinch, he did not turn away, he did not judge, he did not separate, he did not categorize, he did not modify, he did nothing but document, and in that study and within his vignettes, his so-called snap shots, something quite real surfaced, it expounded well beyond the veneer and eventually he found what many of us can only hope to fathom: Mister Robert Frank had simply discovered America & made it his own. Frank turned his eye on America and took its picture. Within that realization also comes a comprehension that although America is not everything we were told, it is now ours and as Americans, we can collectively & individually make a contribution, and in that offering, in that very active step forward into our lives, we make America what it is: You and me. What if the truth you find has something in it that is just the slightest bit askew ? What if your parents fled a dictator for a place that was safe and secure and then you were to gamble all that away for a place that spoke of a much larger idea and when you went out to find that idea, it didn't actually exist ? Like many immigrants, like my ancestors and many of your ancestors, we as a people came to discover America and quickly, we realized that America didn't really exist in the way we thought it did. Seeking the truth, leads to knowledge, with knowledge comes responsibility, with responsibility comes wisdom and somewhere within the wisdom, sits some version of truth. Robert Frank travelled the United States in search of America and Americans: he found both. It is almost impossible to define why and what and how the impetus, the formula, the motivation surfaces within an individual artist, but within the example of Mister Robert Frank, it is safe to say that this honest man, with a most basic and unadorned tool in hand, was indeed on a quest for that rare and delectable entity known quite simply, plainly & rather straightforwardly as: The TRUTH. Robert Frank's photographs have become iconic, the images are American to the core and yet, he was an outsider, a beatnik, an immigrant, a visual poet. Art galleries and private dealers invest tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in reproducing and reselling the Robert Frank catalogue to new collectors at higher and higher prices each year. Museums of the National and International variety create anthologies, catalogues and booklets attempting to put into perspective the precise importance of Mr. P hotographers around the world revere Robert Frank's contributions to the image pool. Lyon captured these early images, It was simply : Real Life. In today's world, we call it, "Street Cred's," back when Mr. Lyon's subjects have a rough road ahead of them, the nostalgia factor is minus just a few levels, due to these obvious aspects, though the cultural value of the images are a few levels higher, for the very same reasons. The subjects are mostly working class and poor kids, the girls' smoke cigarettes, the boys where hand-me-downs, scuffed tennis shoes, they are handsome, tough, and some times, they are downright beautiful, in their innocence, their simpleness and ultimately, in their youth, that fleeting summer moment when everything is a mystery and sometimes, when those mysteries are revealed too soon. Lyon, and in doing so, they reveal something about who we are, where we've been and maybe, where we're headed. Danny Lyon's subjects are somewhat surprised that he is even interested, he's got their trust, and within that simple curiosity, that insight, they stare directly at the viewer, as they did with Mr. A parallel Body of Photographs, to what upscale painters, in the early art days of New York City, branded, "The AshCan School." Artists unafraid to paint real life subjects, streets, alleyways and the working class. These are working class people, The Boys on the front steps, Mom and the kids posing on dad's delivery truck, Bikers out for a Sunday ride, Teenagers with ducktail hair-do's, tattoos and smeared lipstick stains: This is the Other America, The "R - E - A - L," America. The polar opposite to Mister Walt Disney's version. Danny Lyon turned his camera toward an America that was purely alternative, now commonly called, "The Counter Culture." It is the 'Other,' America.
Even today, somewhere, out there, is an America, that nobody knows about.
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