AFTER ROBERT FRANK’S PHOTOBOOK THE AMERICANS: REMAKES, VARIATIONS, AND ICONOCLASM

Abstract

Many contemporary artists’ publications pay tribute to famous artists’ books or photobooks, such as Ed Ruscha’s conceptual artist’s books or Robert Frank’s landmark photobook The Americans. This paper examines Mishka Henner’s version of Frank’s The Americans that he appropriated and partly erased. It questions the process of re-appropriation and studies Henner’s approach: is it a variation in Goodman’s term? Or a remake? It explores both the act of remaking a seminal work, as well as destroying it. It compares Henner’s work to other contemporary projects based on Frank’s book, by Jonathan Lewis, Michel Campeau, Andreas Schmidt, Andrew Emond, as well as Dafydd Hughes, and concludes that these various versions after a classic photobook is a means to be part of a tradition, to be part of what Leo Steinberg called “the glorious company”, as well as departing from its legacy.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. This article originated in the paper that I gave during the Spring School organized in 2017 at the Concordia University in Montreal. I wish to thank Prof. Martha Langford, Dr. Patrizia Di Bello and Prof. Eduardo Ralickas for their stimulating comments after my communication. This paper is part of my research begun during the scientific project supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), entitled Artists and Books (1880–2015): Switzerland as a Cultural Platform that gathered the University of Lausanne and the Swiss National Library. I wish to thank Nella Souskova for her proofreading.

2. As Ute Eskildsen affirms it, trying to delimitate or oppose photobooks and artists’ books within the contemporary works is pointless and vain. Eskildsen, “Photographs in book,” 27.

3. Since the invention of photography, photography and the book share a very close relationship. From Talbot’s The Pencil of Nature (1844) to the most recent publications of photographers, the book is a key element within the photographic production. Patrizia Di Bello and Shamoon Zamir stressed that photography has, since its early years, been displayed in books as well as on walls. Di Bello et al., The Photobook, 1.

4. Greenough, “The Americans (Les Américains), 1959, de Robert Frank,” 603.

5. Douglas R. Nickel states that Evan’s book is “for its genre, as canonical a work as can be imagine”. Nickel, “American Photographs Revisited,” 79.

6. Rosenheim Jeff L., “Robert Frank and Walker Evans,” 150.

7. The French edition reproduces short texts, whereas the English edition publishes Jack Kerouac’s preface. Greenough, “The Americans (Les Américains), 1959, de Robert Frank,” 603.

8. See Nelson, “Making and Remaking The Americans”.

9. The work also exists as a photographic series of gelatin silver prints.

10. Henner quoted in: Baker, “Erasing The Americans”.

11. The exhibition Qu’est-ce que la photographie? (What is Photography?) organized by Clément Chéroux and Karolina Ziebinska-Lewandowska at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2015 featured Mishka Henner’s artist’s book. See Chéroux, Ziebinska-Lewandowska, Qu’est-ce que la photographie?

12. http://www.mishkahenner.com.

13. Moine, Remakes, 21.

14. See what Raphaëlle Moine discusses in: Ibid., 67–99.

15. Goodman, “Variation on Variation, or Picasso back to Bach,” 74.

16. Ibid., 76.

17. Stéphane Reboul uses Goodman’s terminology in order to offer a typology of the various versions after Ruscha’s artist’s books. Reboul, “Typologie pragmatique de la reprise des livres d’artiste d’Ed Ruscha,” 21–35.

18. Galassi, Picasso’s Variations on the Masters, 11.

19. Ed Ruscha’s publications, considered by many to stand for a renewal of conceptual artists’ books in the 1960s, are books that reproduce photographs. Stéphane Reboul drew up a list that could be today expanded and which already included, in 2013, more than 180 remakes of Ruscha’s artist’s books, showing the infinite variants of his publications. Reboul, “Typologie pragmatique de la reprise des livres d’artiste d’Ed Ruscha,” 21–35. See also: Jeff Brows et al., Various Small books.

20. Pantall, “Less is More”; Baker, “Erasing The Americans”.

21. Roberts, “Erased de Kooning Drawing”.

22. See Reboul, “Typologie pragmatique de la reprise des livres d’artiste d’Ed Ruscha,” 21–35.

23. Broomberg, “Afterlife, 2009,” 176.

24. http://www.broombergchanarin.com/kodak-1-1-1-1/.

25. Crimp, “Pictures,” 75–88.

26. Levine declares on that topic: “I am interested in making a work that has as much aura as its reference. For me the tension between the reference and the new work doesn’t really exist unless the new work has an auratic presence of its own. Otherwise, it just becomes a copy, which is not that interesting”. Lewallen, “Sherrie Levine”.

27. She used Marcel Duchamp’s concept in the conference she gave in 2001 at the Getty Research Institute. See: Singerman, “Sherrie Levine’s Art History,” 96–121.

28. See Trespeuch, “Sherrie Levine: de l’appropriationnisme au simulationnisme,” 51.

29. Bourriaud, Postproduction. Culture as Screenplay: How Art Reprograms the World, 7.

30. Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” 239.

31. Chéroux et al., From Here On.

32. On the use of the term “recycling”, see: Roque, L’image recyclée.

33. Henner quoted in: Shore, Post-Photography, 8.

34. Fontcuberta quoted in: Pett, “Mois de la Photo”.

35. See note 10 above.

36. O’Hagan, “Mishka Henner’s erased images: art or insult?”.

37. Ibid.

38. See note 10 above.

39. Henner quoted in: Pantall, “Less is More”.

40. Casper, “Book Review: Less Américains”. LensCulture.

41. http://www.follow-ed.com/afterbefore-gursky/.

42. See note 40 above.

43. See note 20 above.

44. See note 31 above.

45. “Erasing the Old to Make Something New,” http://www.mishkahenner.com.

46. Jno Cook’s The Robert Frank Coloring Book (1983) which gathers drawings made on the basis of Frank’s photographs can be seen as a comment on Frank’s canonical photobook.

47. The exhibition Cutline: The Photography Archives of the Globe and Mail shown in 2016 at the Old Press Hall of The Globe and Mail was part of the Contact Photography Festival. It was later shown in 2016–2017 at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

48. Adams, “Photography book The Canadians a kind of reimagining of The Americans”; and Butet-Roch, “Finding the True. North in Canada”.

49. https://boneidlebooks.com/product/the-canadians.

50. I wish to thank Dafydd Hughes for sharing his thoughts on his project. www.everyfaceintheamericans.ca/book/.

51. Greenough, Looking In.

52. Campeau, Photographic Darkroom, Photogenic Obsolescence.

53. My translation from the French quotes. I would like to thank Michel Campeau for sharing his documents and his thoughts on his work. His series “La photographie amateur, l’instantané et Robert Frank” was shown as part of the exhibition “Michel Campeau. Life Before Digital” at the McCord Museum in Montreal (02.14–05.06.2018).

54. “About the book The Americans” on the website of Blurb: http://www.blurb.com/b/1977415-t-h-e-a-m-e-r-i-c-a-n-s.

55. I wish to thank Andreas Schmidt for answering my questions in August 2017 and for sharing his thoughts on his work. Interview with Andreas Schmidt, August 2017.

56. Interview with Andreas Schmidt, August 2017.

57. My translation. Andreas Schmidt’s email to Michel Campeau, January 2016. Campeau’s documents.

58. My translation. Andreas Schmidt’s email to Michel Campeau, January 2016.

59. http://www.soundsoftheamericans.com/index.html.

60. See note 15 above, 78.

61. “attirance”, “envie”. Levine’s words of the 1980s, quoted in: Buchloh, “Allégorie et appropriation dans l’art contemporain”, 107–153.

62. I emphasize. Henner quoted in: Shore, Post-Photography, 14.

63. “A Letter with Some Thoughts on Photography’s Future”. Album, n°6 (July 1970), 2–3, quoted in: Greenough, “Blowing Down Bleecker Street: Destroying The Americans,” note 26, 350.

64. “a moment of special intensity in the photographic revelation of ‘the truth’ about the American nation”. Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want? 276.

65. Henner quoted in: Pantall, “Less is More”. He explains in Baker, “Erasing The Americans”: “I wanted to do something that was in some ways about the photo book as much as about documentary photography, and Frank’s Americans is kind of the bible of a certain idea of documentary photography if you like”.

66. I wish to thank Professor Martha Langford who gave me an enlightening comment on the first draft of this paper when I presented it in 2017 at the Concordia University in Montreal, under the title: “Les livres de photographie et livres d’artistes ‘d’après’: recyclages, appropriations, hommages”.

67. See note 21 above.

68. Henner, “Some thoughts on Less Américains,” unpublished, June 2013: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0mxn7BUlcSUYlpTUXhJYWdXaVU/view.

69. See note 18 above, 18.

70. Preface to Every Face in The Americans: http://www.everyfaceintheamericans.ca/preface/.

71. See note 56 above, 2017.

72. Preface to the second edition: Bourriaud. Postproduction (2005).

73. Roque, “Introduction,” 29.

74. Steinberg, “Introduction: The Glorious Company,” 8–31.

75. I emphasize. Casper, “Book Review: Less Américains”. LensCulture.

76. Steinberg, “Introduction: The Glorious Company,” 25.

77. See note 56 above 56, 2017.

78. Bourriaud, Postproduction, 7 et seq.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nathalie Dietschy

Nathalie Dietschy is Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. She has published several articles on the relationships between photobooks and the digital and is currently working on a book on artists books in the Internet age. She is the author of The Figure of Christ in Contemporary Photography (Reaktion Books, 2020) and the coeditor of Jésus en représentations (Infolio, 2011) and Le Christ réenvisagé (Infolio, 2016).