A sad poem of American life

摘要

When "The Americans", a collection of 83 imaginative and powerful photographs by Robert Frank, was first published in America in 1959 it was attacked for being anti-American. With McCarthy-ism still in the air, the country's preferred self-portrait resembled Norman Rockwell's covers for the Saturday Evening Post: rosy-cheeked families sitting down to a big, glistening Thanksgiving turkey. Visitors to "Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will quickly observe that Mr Frank's subjects are sometimes too dark to be rosy and could seldom afford a hefty bird.