New Lost City Ramblers 1958 - 1959

Robert Frank made this photograph of the New Lost City Ramblers with a camera, sometime in the mid-twentieth century. The photo is a study in grey tones, and the way these varying shades create atmosphere. It’s the surface of the photograph itself that I find so striking, a kind of meditation on texture. Look closely at the wall behind the musicians. The bricks are not just shapes but individual entities, each with its own unique surface, worn and weathered over time. Then there’s the pavement, scratched and marked, contrasting with the smoothness of the musicians’ suits. This contrast creates a tension, a sense of grit against polish, something that is very common in Frank's photographs of the period. Frank brings to mind other photographers of the period like Helen Levitt, who also had an eye for capturing the poetry of everyday life, the beauty in the mundane. Art is always a conversation, isn’t it?