“They Like the Real World”: Documentary Practices after The Americans

Sarah Hermanson Meister

In late 1959, after two years of trying, Robert Frank succeeded in convincing an American
publisher to print The Americans—a book that not only would come to defi ne his career but also
would mark a turning point in the history of twentieth-century photography. The critical reaction
was immediate, often negative, and profound. The harshest words appeared in Popular
Photography in May 1960, describing the book as “a sad poem for sick people” and “marred by
spite, bitterness, and narrow prejudices, just as so many of the prints are fl awed by meaningless
blur, grain, muddy exposure, drunken horizons, and general sloppiness.”1 For a younger
generation of photographers, however, the rancor it inspired only underscored its radicality and
its promise. In the book’s introduction the writer Jack Kerouac imagined the people depicted
saying, “This is the way we are in real life.” The photographic world had been changing throughout
the 1950s: the illustrated press—which most photographers of serious artistic intent had relied on
as both livelihood and means of sharing their work with the world—was waning in importance and
reach, and American audiences in particular were turning to television to learn about the world
around them. Photographers were also beginning to recognize that a magazine’s editorial
direction might be at odds with the meaning of their work. Some photographers, such as Garry
Winogrand, learned these lessons from the inside, having started their careers at the publications
they later came to distrust, but by the mid-1960s even the younger artists were suspicious of
magazines that might distort or dilute their work. Instead they looked for opportunities to publish
books in which they could control the image selection, sequence, scale, and context. The
Americans was a pinnacle of artistic integrity and independence, a fact confi rmed by how di≈cult
it was for Frank to find a publisher.2

Commercial success was essentially unimaginable—a photograph might sell for twenty-fi ve
dollars, if it sold at all—but many of these photographers still managed to produce monographic
books that featured their work as they wanted it shown, among them 11:02 Nagasaki (1966, plate
32), by Sho¯mei To¯matsu; The Animals (1969) and Women Are Beautiful (1975, plate 4), by
Winogrand; Self Portrait (1970, plate 6), by Lee Friedlander; East 100th Street (1970, plate 17), by
Bruce Davidson; Tulsa (1971, plate 49), by Larry Clark; Aperture’s Diane Arbus monograph (1972,
plates 1–3); Suburbia (1973, plate 41), by Bill Owens; The New West (1974, plate 15), by Robert
Adams; The New Industrial Parks near Irvine, California (1974), by Lewis Baltz; Gypsies (1975, plate
33), by Josef Koudelka; Humanario (1976, plate 34), by Sara Facio with Alicia d’Amico; William
Eggleston’s Guide (1976, plates 20, 21); Carnival Strippers (1976, plate 30), by Susan Meiselas; and
Yokosuka Story (1979, plate 48), by Miyako Ishiuchi.3 Others would follow. It is not hard to sense
the sea change: whereas the generation that came of age artistically in the 1950s or earlier saw
their work circulate fi rst on the pages of Life, Look, Fortune, Esquire, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and
other magazines in Europe and the United States, younger artists largely eschewed magazine
publication, both in principle (to protect their artistic integrity) and because other options for

1
making a living were appearing. A second transformation in the photographic world took place in
the 1960s, with the emergence in the United States of the study of photography as an art form.
The scope and seriousness of this academic framework brought a larger audience to photography
and provided the possibility, for photographers, of employment untainted by commercialism. And
a third seismic shift occurred in 1962, with the arrival of John Szarkowski as the director of the
Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art. It is di≈cult to overstate the signifi
cance of this event: Szarkowski’s approach to the medium, articulated through many exhibitions
and (fewer, but still infl uential) publications, had a transformative eΩect on the ways in which
both historical and contemporary photography was understood. In 1967 Szarkowski organized the
exhibition New Documents, in which he introduced Arbus, Friedlander, and Winogrand: Most of
those who were called documentary photographers a generation ago, when the label was new,
made their pictures in the service of a social cause. It was their aim to show what was wrong with
the world, and to persuade their fellows to take action and make it right. In the past decade a new
generation of photographer has directed the documentary approach toward more personal ends.
Their aim has been not to reform life, but to know it. Their work betrays a sympathy—almost an
aΩection—for the imperfections and the frailties of society. They like the real world, in spite of its
terrors, as the source of all wonder and fascination and value— no less precious for being
irrational. This exhibition shows a handful of pictures by three photographers of that generation.
What unites them is not style or sensibility: each has a distinct and personal sense of the uses of
photography and the meanings of the world. What they hold in common is a belief that the
commonplace is really worth looking at, and the courage to look at it with a minimum of
theorizing.4 In the nearly fi fty years since New Documents, there has been a tendency to group
the achievements of these three photographers, minimizing the individuality of each, although
surely that was not Szarkowski’s intent. The works of Arbus, Friedlander, and Winogrand, as well
as of many other artists who sought to engage with the real world through a camera’s lens, are as
diverse as what they chose to photograph; to borrow Szarkowski’s phrase to discuss them is both
to acknowledge the exhibition’s infl uence and to newly apply its notion to the wide range of
practices represented here, as well as in other chapters of this volume. This air of (or interest in)
authenticity became a central preoccupation of photographers who otherwise had little in
common in the following decades. Even within the rather strict parameters of straight
photography—artists examining the world with a camera—the period between 1960 and 1980
was one of unprecedented vitality and heterogeneity. Artists such as Bernd and Hilla Becher (plate
72), Nan Goldin (plate 92), Duane Michals (plate 145), and Nicholas Nixon (plate 219) were very
much interested in the real world, whatever form that interest might take. Most of the artists who
appear in this chapter were featured in solo exhibitions during Szarkowski’s tenure at MoMA.5
That these fi gures form the core of an artistic canon of the era suggests Szarkowski’s singular infl
uence: in 1982 the art historian and curator Christopher Phillips described Szarkowski’s position as
“the judgment seat of photography.”6 From that same seat Edward Steichen, Szarkowski’s
predecessor, had often subsumed individual achievements into musings on the medium’s
universality, epitomized in 1955 by the exhibition The Family of Man. Szarkowski was determined
to put forward the specifi city of each photographer’s vision, to the extent of titling his fi rst
exhibition at MoMA Five Unrelated Photographers. There is certainly a danger of overstating the

2
power of an individual or institution to transform culture, but to pretend that MoMA and
Szarkowski were not critical to understanding the 1960s and ’70s is to risk a greater historical
inaccuracy, especially from an American perspective. MoMA was not alone in its attentiveness to
work of this sort, nor in its eΩorts to bring it to a broader audience. As the shifts of the 1950s were
taking place, the George Eastman House, in Rochester, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; and
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, were all collecting and exhibiting photographs to
varying degrees; the International Center of Photography, in New York, and the Center for
Creative Photography, in Tucson, were founded in 1974 and 1975, respectively. In December 1966
the curator Nathan Lyons brought together the work of Davidson, Friedlander, Winogrand, Danny
Lyon (plate 43), and Michals in Toward a Social Landscape, an exhibition organized for the George
Eastman House with a modest catalogue typical of the era. In his essay for the catalogue Lyons
astutely concluded, I do not fi nd it hard to believe that photographers who have been concerned
with the question of the authentic relevance of events and objects should consciously or
unconsciously adopt one of the most authentic picture forms photography has produced. The
directness of their commentary of “people and people things” is not an attempt to defi ne but to
clarify the meaning of the human condition. The reference point of each photographer is
presented as a separate portfolio. The combined statement is one of comment, observation,
aluminum, chrome, the automobile, people, objects, people in relation to things, questioning,
ambiguity, humor, bitterness and affection.7

The following month Twelve Photographers of the American Social Landscape, organized by
Thomas Garver, opened at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, in Massachusetts. Garver
brought together the work of four of the same photographers (Davidson, Friedlander, Lyon,
Michals) with that of eight others (Frank, Ralph Gibson, Warren Hill, Rudolph Janu, Simpson
Kalisher, James Marchael, Philip Perkis, and Tom Zimmermann). The connection between his and
Lyons’s titles is not entirely coincidental; in his acknowledgements Garver cited a 1963 interview in
which Friedlander described his preoccupation with “the American social landscape and its
conditions.”8 In his catalogue’s introduction Garver held up journalistic practices as a mirror
against which contemporary activity could be understood: This exhibition is based on things as
they are. Many of the photographs are of the evanescent, events as minor in importance as they
are fl eeting in time. They are anti-news—or at least, non-news—things as they are rather than
things as they should be, could be or are thought to be. These twelve photographers . . . are less
concerned with explicit messages than with implicit commentary, though to call them “cool” for
their seemingly noncommittal approach is inadequate. Their photographs are not visual “no-
comments” but rather records of real events oΩered to an audience who may not always believe
the events are that way.9 Garver used the word “record”; Lyons chose “snapshot”; Szarkowski
(whose New Documents would open in February 1967) emphasized “document.” Although the
terms are hardly synonymous, each suggests a focus on fact, authenticity, or reality. Garver, Lyons,
and Szarkowski all pointed out these photographers’ appreciation for the ordinary,
inconsequential, and trivial, and pointed to the individual nature of their achievements (in the
catalogues and on the walls, their photographs were presented in distinct groups, not intermixed).
Only Garver explicitly mentions Frank, but Frank’s ode to the uncelebrated aspects of American

3
culture echoes throughout. There is no word more closely associated with photography
throughout its history than “documentary,” and this association is both appropriate and
misleading: appropriate because photography is uniquely and inextricably connected to the real
world, and as such a vast majority of images captured through the camera’s lens might reasonably
be described as documents (of a face, a landscape, an event), and misleading because throughout
the twentieth century artists and art historians have struggled to defi ne what “documentary”
means. It can be understood as a style, a means of communication, a signal of authenticity; most
photographs can function as documents, proof, records, or evidence. In 1975 Baltz noted that
there is something paradoxical in the way that documentary photographs interact with our
notions of reality. To function as documents at all they must fi rst persuade us that they describe
their subject accurately and objectively. . . . The ideal photographic document would appear to be
without author or art. Yet of course photographs, despite their verisimilitude, are abstractions;
their information is selective and incomplete.10 In 1975 William Jenkins organized New
Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape for the George Eastman House, with the
purpose of “simply . . . [postulating], at least for the time being, what it means to make a
documentary photograph.”11 Eight young and fairly young Americans (Adams, Baltz [plate 16], Joe
Deal, Frank Gohlke [plate 47], Nixon, John Schott, Stephen Shore [plates 22, 23], and Henry
Wessel, Jr. [plate 24]) were presented alongside the German Bechers, whose association with
Conceptual art practices was not as entrenched as it often seems today. Their work shows nary a
human fi gure but evidences a keen interest in rendering the built environment with “a minimum
of infl ection.” Their apparent neutrality harkened back in part to Ed Ruscha and his deadpan
surveys, beginning in 1962, of gasoline stations, apartments, and parking lots (plate 56); as Jenkins
astutely observed, however, “There remains an essential and signifi cant diΩerence between
Ruscha [and the photographs in this exhibition]. . . . The nature of this diΩerence is found in an
understanding of the diΩerence between what a picture is of and what it is about. Ruscha’s
pictures of gasoline stations are not about gasoline stations but about a set of aesthetic issues.”12

What this heterogeneous group of artists fundamentally share, as do those more immediately
identifi able with the legacy of Frank in the mid- to late 1960s, is an ability to infl ect what appears
to be a straightforward document from the real world with individual meaning. The photography
historian Jonathan Green observed in 1984 that “almost every major pictorial style and
iconographical concern that . . . dominate American straight photography in the late sixties and
throughout the seventies can be traced back to one or more of the eighty-two [sic, there were
eighty-three] photographs in The Americans. . . . Frank’s photographs . . . laid the groundwork for
endless experimentation. The list of major photographers who . . . derive from Frank is impressive,
and continually growing.”13 So it is a curious coincidence that during the decades in which the
photographs in this chapter were made, Frank turned from photography to fi lmmaking. His legacy
has nevertheless loomed large, both in the United States and elsewhere. The primary emphasis of
this essay has been on American photography, refl ecting in part the specifi c makeup of the
photographs in MoMA’s collection. The Museum’s database contains eight thousand photographs
made between 1960 and 1980, and more than three-quarters of these were made by American
artists, but MoMA was not blind to developments elsewhere. In 1974 Szarkowski and the Japanese

4
critic and editor Sho¯ji Yamagishi organized New Japanese Photography, which was structured, like
New Documents, as a suite of fi fteen solo exhibitions. To¯matsu, Daido¯ Moriyama (plates 50, 51),
and Kikuji Kawada (plate 31) were three of the featured artists being introduced to an American
audience. New Japanese Photography did not outline an overarching theme, but many of the
images examined daily life in Japan in the aftermath of World War II. And although the curators
embraced technical and stylistic diΩerences, as they did in New Documents, many photographs
featured rough grain and high contrast, evoking the raw grit of contemporary experience. The
market for photographs in the 1960s and ’70s was nearly nonexistent, yet Szarkowski regularly
collected work made outside the United States and western Europe. He acquired the vast majority
of the works in New Japanese Photography, purchased Koudelka’s photographs of Gypsies in his
native Czechoslovakia in 1968, barely a year after the artist gave up engineering for photography,
and a dozen works by the South African photographer David Goldblatt in 1978 (plate 35). In recent
years, the Museum has made strategic eΩorts to collect works by artists from Latin America,
Central and Eastern Europe, and Eastern Asia; the works by Paolo Gasparini (plate 28) and Facio
represent but two of the fruits of those efforts.

To begin his essay in the New Topographics catalogue, Jenkins quoted the writer Jorge Luis Borges:
“I should try to tell, in a straightforward way, plain stories, so that I will try to get away from
mazes, from mirrors, from daggers, from tigers, because all of those things now grow a bit of a
bore to me. So that I will try to write a book, a book so good that nobody will think I have written
it. I would write a book—I won’t say in somebody else’s style—but in the style of anybody else.”14
Just as Borges’s straightforward prose bears the imprimatur of its maker, the multitude of
individual visions represented in this chapter—despite their shared mechanical roots—present
themselves clearly to those interested in seeing.

1. Robert Frank, The Americans (New York: Grove Press, 1959). A French edition had appeared the
previous year published by Robert Delpire. Peter Galassi has observed that the most quoted of the
book’s negative reviews appeared in the May 1960 issue of Popular Photography. Galassi, Robert
Frank in America (Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2014), p. 36.

2. For my summary of this era I am in debt to John Szarkowski’s convincing analysis of the
photographic world on the eve of the 1960s in Mirrors and Windows: American Photography since
1960 (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1978), pp. 11–25.

3. Aperture published Diane Arbus’s book posthumously but editorial control reamained with
Doon Arbus, the artist’s daughter, and Marvin Israel, an artist, designer, art director, teacher, and
friend.

4. Szarkowski, wall text for New Documents, 1967. MoMA Archives, New York.

5. The solo exhibitions presented at MoMA between 1962 and 1991 (or group shows featuring
individual achievements) included those devoted to Robert Adams, in 1971, 1979, and 1984;

5
Arbus, in 1967 and 1972; Mark Cohen, in 1973; Bruce Davidson, in 1966 and 1970; William
Eggleston, in 1976; Larry Fink, in 1979; Lee Friedlander, in 1967, 1972, 1974, and 1991; William
Gedney, in 1968; Frank Gohlke, in 1978 and 1983; Emmet Gowin, in 1971; Chauncey Hare, in 1977;
Kikuji Kawada, in 1974; Josef Koudelka, in 1975; Helen Levitt, in 1974; Joel Meyerowitz, in 1968;
Daido Moriyama, in 1974; Stephen Shore, in 1976; Rosalind Fox Solomon, in 1986; Joel Sternfeld,
in 1984; Shōmei Tōmatsu, in 1974; Henry Wessel, Jr., in 1972; and Garry Winogrand, in 1963,
1967, 1969, 1977, and 1988.

6. Christopher Phillips, “The Judgment Seat of Photography,” October 22 (Autumn 1982): 27–63.

7. Nathan Lyons, introduction to Toward a Social Landscape (New York: Horizon Press; Rochester,
N.Y.: George Eastman House, 1966), p. 7.

8. Contemporary Photographer 4, no. 4 (Fall 1963): 13.

9. Thomas H. Garver, introduction to Twelve Photographers of the American Social Landscape

10. Lewis Baltz, book review of The New West: Landscapes along the Colorado Front Range, by
Robert Adams, in Art in America 63, no. 2 (March–April 1975): 41. Quoted in William Jenkins,
introduction to New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape (Rochester, N.Y.:
International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, 1975), p. 6.

11. Jenkins, New Topographics, p. 7.

12. Ibid., p. 5.

13. Jonathan Green. American Photography: A Critical History 1945 to the Present (New York:
Harry N. Abrams, 1984), p. 92.

14. Jorge Luis Borges, “A Post-Lecture Discussion of his Own Writing,” Critical Inquiry 1, no. 4 (June
1975): 710. Quoted in William Jenkins, New Topographics, p. 5.

6
"Les gusta el mundo real": prácticas documentales después de los estadounidenses

Sarah Hermanson Meister

A fines de 1959, después de dos años de intentos, Robert Frank logró convencer a un editor
estadounidense de que imprimiera The Americans, un libro que no solo vencería su carrera sino
que marcaría un punto de inflexión en la historia de la fotografía del siglo XX . La reacción crítica
fue inmediata, a menudo negativa y profunda. Las palabras más duras aparecieron en Popular
Photography en mayo de 1960, describiendo el libro como "un triste poema para personas
enfermas" y "estropeado por el rencor, la amargura y los estrechos prejuicios, así como muchas de
las huellas están desdibujadas por un desenfoque sin sentido, grano , exposición fangosa,
horizontes borrachos y descuido general. "1 Para una generación más joven de fotógrafos, sin
embargo, el rencor que inspiró solo subrayó su radicalidad y su promesa. En la introducción del
libro, el escritor Jack Kerouac imaginó a las personas representadas diciendo: "Así es como somos
en la vida real". El mundo fotográfico había cambiado a lo largo de la década de 1950: la prensa
ilustrada, de la que la mayoría de los fotógrafos como medio de vida y como medio para compartir
su trabajo con el mundo, estaba disminuyendo en importancia y alcance, y el público
estadounidense en particular estaba recurriendo a la televisión para aprender sobre el mundo que
les rodea. Los fotógrafos también comenzaron a reconocer que la dirección editorial de una
revista podría estar en desacuerdo con el significado de su trabajo. Algunos fotógrafos, como
Garry Winogrand, aprendieron estas lecciones desde el interior, comenzando sus carreras en las
publicaciones de las que luego desconfiaron, pero a mediados de la década de 1960, incluso los
artistas más jóvenes desconfiaban de las revistas que podían distorsionar o diluir su trabajo. En su
lugar, buscaron oportunidades para publicar libros en los que pudieran controlar la selección de
imágenes, la secuencia, la escala y el contexto. Los estadounidenses fueron un pináculo de
integridad artística e independencia, un hecho que se confirma por lo difícil que fue para Frank
encontrar un editor.2

El éxito comercial era esencialmente inimaginable -una fotografía podría venderse por veinticinco
dólares, si es que se vendía en absoluto-, pero muchos de estos fotógrafos aún lograron producir
libros monográficos que presentaban su trabajo tal como lo querían, entre ellos 11:02 Nagasaki
(1966, placa 32), por Sho¯mei To¯matsu; The Animals (1969) y Women are Beautiful (1975, lámina
4), de Winogrand; Autorretrato (1970, lámina 6), de Lee Friedlander; East 100th Street (1970,
placa 17), por Bruce Davidson; Tulsa (1971, placa 49), por Larry Clark; La monografía de Diane
Arbus de Aperture (1972, láminas 1-3); Suburbia (1973, lámina 41), por Bill Owens; The New West
(1974, lámina 15), de Robert Adams; Los nuevos parques industriales cerca de Irvine, California
(1974), de Lewis Baltz; Gitanos (1975, lámina 33), por Josef Koudelka; Humanario (1976, lámina
34), de Sara Facio con Alicia d'Amico; La guía de William Eggleston (1976, placas 20, 21); Carnival
Strippers (1976, placa 30), por Susan Meiselas; y Yokosuka Story (1979, lámina 48), de Miyako
Ishiuchi.3 Otros seguirían. No es difícil percibir el cambio radical: mientras que la generación que
alcanzó la mayoría de edad artísticamente en la década de 1950 o antes vio su trabajo circular

7
primero en las páginas de Life, Look, Fortune, Esquire, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar y otras revistas en
Europa y los Estados Unidos, los artistas más jóvenes evitaron en gran medida la publicación de
revistas, tanto en principio (para proteger su integridad artística) como porque otras opciones
para el poder de un individuo o institución para transformar la cultura, pero pretender que el
MoMA y Szarkowski no fueron críticos para entender las décadas de 1960 y 1970 es arriesgarse a
una mayor inexactitud histórica, especialmente desde una perspectiva estadounidense. El MoMA
no fue el único en prestar atención al trabajo de este tipo, ni en sus mejores esfuerzos para
llevarlo a un público más amplio. A medida que se producían los cambios de la década de 1950,
George Eastman House, en Rochester, Nueva York; el Instituto de Arte de Chicago; y el Museo
Metropolitano de Arte, en Nueva York, estaban recolectando y exhibiendo fotografías en diversos
grados; el Centro Internacional de Fotografía, en Nueva York, y el Centro de Fotografía Creativa, en
Tucson, fueron fundados en 1974 y 1975, respectivamente. En diciembre de 1966 el curador
Nathan Lyons reunió el trabajo de Davidson, Friedlander, Winogrand, Danny Lyon (lámina 43) y
Michals en Toward a Social Landscape, una exposición organizada para George Eastman House con
un modesto catálogo típico de la época. En su ensayo para el catálogo concluido astutamente por
Lyons, no me parece difícil creer que los fotógrafos que se han preocupado por la cuestión de la
relevancia auténtica de los eventos y objetos deben adoptar, consciente o inconscientemente, una
de las formas pictóricas más auténticas que tiene la fotografía. producido. La franqueza de su
comentario de "personas y cosas de personas" no es un intento de definir, sino de aclarar el
significado de la condición humana. El punto de referencia de cada fotógrafo se presenta como
una cartera separada. La declaración combinada es de comentario, observación, aluminio, cromo,
automóvil, personas, objetos, personas en relación con las cosas, preguntas, ambigüedad, humor,
amargura y afecto.

El siguiente mes Doce Fotógrafos del Paisaje Social Estadounidense, organizado por Thomas
Garver, se inauguró en el Rose Art Museum de la Universidad de Brandeis, en Massachusetts.
Garver reunió el trabajo de cuatro de los mismos fotógrafos (Davidson, Friedlander, Lyon, Michals)
con el de otros ocho (Frank, Ralph Gibson, Warren Hill, Rudolph Janu, Simpson Kalisher, James
Marchael, Philip Perkis y Tom Zimmermann) . La conexión entre sus títulos y los de Lyons no es del
todo casual; en sus reconocimientos, Garver citó una entrevista de 1963 en la que Friedlander
describía su preocupación por "el paisaje social estadounidense y sus condiciones" .8 En la
introducción de su catálogo, Garver consideraba las prácticas periodísticas como un espejo contra
el que podía entenderse la actividad contemporánea: esta exposición se basa en las cosas tal como
son Muchas de las fotografías son evanescentes, eventos de menor importancia ya que están
flotando en el tiempo. Son anti-noticias, o al menos no son noticias, como son en lugar de cosas
como deberían ser, podrían ser o podrían serlo. Estos doce fotógrafos. . . están menos
preocupados con los mensajes explícitos que con los comentarios implícitos, aunque llamarlos
"geniales" por su enfoque aparentemente evasivo es inadecuado. Sus fotografías no son "no-
comentarios" visuales sino más bien registros de eventos reales dirigidos a una audiencia que
puede no siempre creer que los eventos son así.9 Garver usó la palabra "grabar"; Lyons eligió
"instantánea"; Szarkowski (cuyos Nuevos documentos abrirían en febrero de 1967) enfatizaba el
"documento". Aunque los términos son apenas sinónimos, cada uno sugiere un enfoque en los

8
hechos, la autenticidad o la realidad. Garver, Lyons y Szarkowski señalaron el aprecio de estos
fotógrafos por lo ordinario, inconsecuente y trivial, y señalaron la naturaleza individual de sus
logros (en los catálogos y en las paredes, sus fotografías se presentaron en grupos distintos, no
entremezclados). ) Solo Garver menciona explícitamente a Frank, pero la oda de Frank a los
aspectos no celebrados de American la cultura hace eco en todo. No hay palabras más
relacionadas con la fotografía a lo largo de su historia que el "documental", y esta asociación es
apropiada y engañosa: apropiada porque la fotografía está única e inextricablemente conectada al
mundo real y, como tal, la gran mayoría de las imágenes capturadas a través del la lente de la
cámara podría describirse razonablemente como documentos (de una cara, un paisaje, un evento)
y engañosa porque a lo largo del siglo XX artistas e historiadores del arte han luchado para definir
qué significa "documental". Puede entenderse como un estilo, un medio de comunicación, una
señal de autenticidad; la mayoría de las fotografías pueden funcionar como documentos, pruebas,
registros o evidencia. En 1975, Baltz notó que hay algo paradójico en la forma en que las
fotografías documentales interactúan con nuestras nociones de la realidad. Para funcionar como
documentos, primero deben convencernos de que describen su tema de forma precisa y objetiva.
. . . El documento fotográfico ideal parecería ser sin autor o arte. Sin embargo, por supuesto, las
fotografías, a pesar de su verosimilitud, son abstracciones; su información es selectiva e
incompleta.10 En 1975 William Jenkins organizó New Topographics: fotografías de un paisaje
alterado por el hombre para la Casa George Eastman, con el propósito de "simplemente". . .
[postulando], al menos por el momento, lo que significa hacer una fotografía documental ". 11
Ocho jóvenes y bastante jóvenes estadounidenses (Adams, Baltz [lámina 16], Joe Deal, Frank
Gohlke [lámina 47], Nixon, John Schott, Stephen Shore [placas 22, 23] y Henry Wessel, Jr. [lámina
24]) se presentaron junto con los alemanes Bechers, cuya asociación con las prácticas artísticas
conceptuales no estaba tan arraigada como a menudo parece hoy en día. Su trabajo no muestra
una figura humana, pero muestra un gran interés en hacer que el entorno construido tenga "un
mínimo de influencia". Su aparente neutralidad se remontaba en parte a Ed Ruscha y sus
inexpresivos estudios, comenzando en 1962, de estaciones de servicio, apartamentos y
estacionamientos (placa 56); como Jenkins observó astutamente, sin embargo, "Sigue habiendo
una diferencia esencial y significativa entre Ruscha [y las fotografías de esta exposición]. . . . La
naturaleza de esta diferencia se encuentra en la comprensión de la diferencia entre lo que es una
imagen y de qué se trata. Las imágenes de estaciones de gasolina de Ruscha no se tratan de
estaciones de servicio sino de una serie de problemas estéticos ". 12

Lo que este heterogéneo grupo de artistas comparte fundamentalmente, como lo hacen los más
identificables de forma inmediata con el legado de Frank a mediados y finales de los 60, es la
capacidad de inflar lo que parece ser un documento directo del mundo real con significado
individual. El historiador de la fotografía Jonathan Green observó en 1984 que "casi todos los
principales estilos pictóricos y preocupaciones iconográficas que. . . Domina la fotografía directa
estadounidense a finales de los años sesenta y durante los años setenta se remonta a una o más
de las ochenta y dos [sic, había ochenta y tres] fotografías en The Americans. . . . Las fotografías de
Frank. . . sentó las bases para la experimentación sin fin. La lista de los principales fotógrafos que. .
. derivar de Frank es impresionante y está en continuo crecimiento. "13 Por lo tanto, es una

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curiosa coincidencia que durante las décadas en que se realizaron las fotografías de este capítulo,
Frank pasó de la fotografía al cine. Sin embargo, su legado ha adquirido gran importancia, tanto en
los Estados Unidos como en otros lugares. El énfasis principal de este ensayo ha sido la fotografía
estadounidense, que refleja en parte la composición específica de las fotografías en la colección
del MoMA. La base de datos del museo contiene ocho mil fotografías realizadas entre 1960 y
1980, y más de las tres cuartas partes de ellas fueron hechas por artistas estadounidenses, pero el
MoMA no estaba ciego a los acontecimientos en otros lugares. En 1974, Szarkowski y los
japoneses el crítico y editor Sho¯ji Yamagishi organizó New Japanese Photography, que fue
estructurado, como New Documents, como un conjunto de quince exposiciones individuales.
To¯matsu, Daido¯ Moriyama (placas 50, 51) y Kikuji Kawada (lámina 31) fueron tres de los artistas
presentados a un público estadounidense. La nueva fotografía japonesa no delineó un tema
general, pero muchas de las imágenes examinaron la vida cotidiana en Japón después de la
Segunda Guerra Mundial. Y aunque los conservadores adoptaron las diferencias técnicas y
estilísticas, como lo hicieron en los Nuevos documentos, muchas fotografías presentaban
rugosidad y alto contraste, evocando la arena cruda de la experiencia contemporánea. El mercado
de fotografías en las décadas de 1960 y 1970 era casi inexistente, sin embargo, Szarkowski
regularmente coleccionaba trabajos realizados fuera de los Estados Unidos y Europa occidental.
Adquirió la gran mayoría de las obras de Nueva fotografía japonesa, compró las fotografías de
gitanos de Koudelka en su Checoslovaquia natal en 1968, apenas un año después de que el artista
renunciara a la ingeniería por la fotografía, y una docena de obras del fotógrafo sudafricano David
Goldblatt en 1978 (placa 35). En los últimos años, el Museo ha realizado esfuerzos estratégicos
para recopilar obras de artistas de América Latina, Europa Central y del Este y Asia Oriental; las
obras de Paolo Gasparini (lámina 28) y Facio representan solo dos de los frutos de esos esfuerzos.

Para comenzar su ensayo en el catálogo de New Topographics, Jenkins citó al escritor Jorge Luis
Borges: "Debería tratar de contar, de manera directa, historias sencillas, de modo que trate de
alejarme de laberintos, espejos, dagas, de tigres, porque todas esas cosas ahora me resultan un
poco aburridas. De modo que intentaré escribir un libro, un libro tan bueno que nadie piense que
lo he escrito. Escribiría un libro, no diré en el estilo de otra persona, pero al estilo de cualquier otra
persona "14. Así como la prosa directa de Borges lleva el sello de su creador, la multitud de
visiones individuales representadas en este capítulo -a pesar de su raíces mecánicas compartidas:
se presentan claramente a aquellos interesados en ver.

1. Robert Frank, The Americans (Nueva York: Grove Press, 1959). Una edición francesa había
aparecido el año anterior publicado por Robert Delpire. Peter Galassi ha observado que la crítica
más comentada del libro apareció en la edición de mayo de 1960 de Popular Photography. Galassi,
Robert Frank en América (Göttingen, Alemania: Steidl, 2014), p. 36.

2. Para mi resumen de esta época, estoy en deuda con el análisis convincente de John Szarkowski
sobre el mundo fotográfico en la víspera de la década de 1960 en Mirrors and Windows: American
Photography desde 1960 (Nueva York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1978), pp . 11-25.

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3. Aperture publicó el libro de Diane Arbus póstumamente, pero el control editorial se mantuvo
con Doon Arbus, la hija del artista, y Marvin Israel, artista, diseñador, director de arte, maestro y
amigo.

4. Szarkowski, texto de pared para Nuevos documentos, 1967. MoMA Archives, Nueva York.

5. Las exposiciones individuales presentadas en el MoMA entre 1962 y 1991, incluidas las
dedicadas a Robert Adams, en 1971, 1979 y 1984; Arbus, en 1967 y 1972; Mark Cohen, en 1973;
Bruce Davidson, en 1966 y 1970; William Eggleston, en 1976; Larry Fink, en 1979; Lee Friedlander,
en 1967, 1972, 1974 y 1991; William Gedney, en 1968; Frank Gohlke, en 1978 y 1983; Emmet
Gowin, en 1971; Chauncey Hare, en 1977; Kikuji Kawada, en 1974; Josef Koudelka, en 1975; Helen
Levitt, en 1974; Joel Meyerowitz, en 1968; Daido Moriyama, en 1974; Stephen Shore, en 1976;
Rosalind Fox Solomon, en 1986; Joel Sternfeld, en 1984; Shōmei Tōmatsu, en 1974; Henry Wessel,
Jr., en 1972; y Garry Winogrand, en 1963, 1967, 1969, 1977 y 1988.

6. Christopher Phillips, "The Judgment Seat of Photography", 22 de octubre (otoño de 1982): 27-
63.

7. Nathan Lyons, introducción a Toward a Social Landscape (Nueva York: Horizon Press, Rochester,
N.Y .: George Eastman House, 1966), p. 7.

8. Fotógrafo contemporáneo 4, no. 4 (otoño de 1963): 13.

9. Thomas H. Garver, introducción a Doce Fotógrafos del Paisaje Social Estadounidense (Waltham,
Mass .: Poses Institute of Fine Arts, Brandeis University, 1967), n.p.

10. Lewis Baltz, reseña del libro de The New West: Paisajes a lo largo del Colorado Front Range,
por Robert Adams, en Art in America 63, no. 2 (marzo-abril de 1975): 41. Citado en William
Jenkins, introducción a New Topographics: fotografías de un paisaje alterado por el hombre
(Rochester, N.Y .: Museo Internacional de Fotografía en George Eastman House, 1975), p. 6.

11. Jenkins, New Topographics, p. 7.

12. Ibid., P. 5.

13. Jonathan Green. Fotografía estadounidense: Una historia crítica desde 1945 hasta el presente
(Nueva York: Harry N. Abrams, 1984), p. 92.

14. Jorge Luis Borges, "Una discusión posterior a la conferencia de su propia escritura",
Investigación crítica 1, no. 4 (junio de 1975): 710. Citado en William Jenkins, New Topographics, p.
5.

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