Meeting Robert Frank

I’ve always been a great Robert Frank fan. I own at least five copies of The Americans, and have studied his work as much as anyone else’s to learn how to be a photographer.

On March 28, 2013, I went to the Steven Kasher Gallery in Manhattan for an opening of an exhibition of Daido Moriyama’s photos. I usually miss openings because they’re on Thursday nights, and I’m always teaching a fiction writing class at the New School on Thursdays at the same time as the openings. But tonight was Spring Break.

Along with the Moriyama opening, there was a small room of photos by A-Chan, a young woman who I understood was Robert Frank’s assistant. I was looking at her photos when a door into the gallery office opened, and stayed open. Across a wide wooden table I saw Robert Frank and his wife, June Leaf.

I was startled. I’d always hoped to meet Frank, and there he was.

Of course he was locked away in the gallery’s private office. So I looked more at the Daido photos, hovered about, and looked long and hard at Moriyama’s work, which I love. I ran into a friend and told him, “Hey, Robert Frank is here—in the back room.” We talked, and as we did, the door from the back room opened, and there were Robert Frank and June Leaf.

I can be bold, and I went to him, shook his hand, told him how much his work means to me. His wife beamed. Frank smiled, shook my hand, then moved on.

I had my camera out, and thought, Why not take a picture?
For reasons I can’t account for­—the change seems almost impossible unless desired—my Fuji X100 had shifted from still mode into movie mode. I didn’t know this and just tried for a couple snaps.

Instead I was shooting a movie.

When I looked at the camera’s screen to see how well the pictures turned out, I was bemused to see black film frames around what I’d shot. At first I didn’t understand why this was (I’d never taken movies with my X100 before), then I realized the camera had slipped into movie mode on its own. Without the manual, I didn’t even know how to play back the images.

It wasn’t until I was home that I figured out how to look at what I’d shot. I watched a long sequence of floor, people’s elbows, ceiling, black, more black, another elbow, more black—nothing usable or even interesting.

There was another film clip.

When I played that back, I saw black, more black, then an opening of light at the top … and slowly Robert Frank’s head came into view.

The clip ended with Frank’s head right in front of me, filling half the frame, visible, obvious, on his way out of the gallery.

Watch the movie above. It feels uncannily Frank-like, and thus a blessing.

—Robert Dunn, March 31, 2013

The book is available at the ICP bookstore, Dashwood, Spoonbill and Sugartown, McNally-Jackson, and other places.