influence.

so today i was watching this PBS documentary about annie leibovitz, who became the chief photographer for rolling stone in the 70s. it was a pretty interesting documentary. she has taken photos of everyone from the grateful dead to michael jordan. she took john lennon's last photo, hours before he was shot. she took that infamous demi moore pregnant nude shot. she's done a lot of crazy things.

anyway, in this documentary, she talks about one of her major influences, robert frank. he became pretty famous for his book "the americans" which was published in 1958. he was given a grant from the guggenheim foundation, and simply travelled the country from coast to coast for a two-year span and took photos of everyday life in america. about 28,000 to be exact, which were narrowed down to 83 photos for his final version of the book.

i've seen his photos before, so today i've been reading a lot about him online. i didn't really know too much about the guy. many people described him as a "sneaky" photographer because he took a lot of candid shots. (personally, i hate posed photos and always try to take pictures of people in the moment.) after "the americans" was published, he got into film and actually shot an unreleased documentary of the rolling stones on their 1972 north american tour, right when they released exile on main st. (the album cover was actually a photo taken by robert frank of a wall inside a tattoo shop) nothing was excluded. the film featured all kinds of elicit drug use and sex in addition to live performances and everything in between. it was called cocksucker blues, which was actually the title of a song that was supposed to appear on the album to piss off the record label, since their contract with the band was done after that album. it was never included on the album and was released on some european comp a year or two later. the documentary was never officially released, but bootleg copies have made their way around and if this link still works, you can watch it here.

anyways, robert frank was a pretty influential dude and took a lot of amazing photos. his style was great and done using such now-primitive technology, which really goes to prove that no matter how many advances we have, and no matter how much money people spend on expensive cameras, it's really about how you look at life and capturing moments at the correct time. you either have it or you don't.

photos from "the americans":