Where were you when you first saw Robert Frank’s The Americans?

I remember it well—one of my first photography teachers gave me an extra copy he had. That was twenty years ago. It was a special thing and all I recall him saying was that this was a “really important book.” It instantly struck me as being different than the other things I had seen—there was a darkness, a sadness—there was a poetry to it that immediately caught my interest.

What is the importance of The Americans to you?

I can’t even count how many times I’ve revisited The Americans in my working process. It’s such a rich collection of diverse, individual images that is remarkable as a cohesive, unified whole. My favorites constantly shift depending on what I am invested in at that particular moment.

Two photographs that I’d consider clear influences are the covered car, 'Long Beach, California' and his view from the hotel window, 'Butte, Montana'.

From 'Long Beach, California', I learned that the outside of a home can speak directly to the inside of a home—or at least it can help us create our own perceptions of what that interior narrative might be.






From 'Butte, Montana', I realized that what you are looking through—curtains or a rainy windshield in this comparison—all contribute to a specific point of view. It suggests that the camera is not a detached recorder, nor is the resulting image purely an indexical document. Frank’s photographs reminded us that there’s a person behind the viewfinder, and that their own journey is part of the picture.