Janet Malcolm
[Writer, b. 1934, Prague, Czechoslovakia, lives in New York.]
Taking his cue from the snapshot, [Robert Frank] grasped that the camera is equipped as no other medium to show us things in their worst possible aspect. The camera’s profound misanthropy, its willingness to go unpleasant places where no one wants to venture, its nasty preference for precisely those facets of our nature we most wish to disown... are the real subjects of Frank’s pictures.
The house of American photography has many mansions, which, until a few years ago, were completely sealed off from one another.
(1976)
