Hello, my name's Nicholas Davidoff and in 2015 I wrote a piece about Robert Frank,

the photographer and filmmaker.

Robert Frank made photographs that most people when he took them didn't consider beautiful

and some people were repelled by them.

Like most people I got to know Robert through his famous work The Americans, which is a collection

of photographs that were taken during the 1950s.

He traveled around the country in the 1950s taking many, many, many photographs.

And in those photographs he tried to communicate the diversity of what made this country.

He tried to show how the United States was a country filled with all kinds of people

and he saw with such a security, had such a perceptive eye that his great ability was

to help Americans to see themselves as they hadn't yet seen themselves.

To look at the Americans today is probably even more intense than it was in the 1950s

and in the 1950s when people looked at them they were horrified.

And I don't think people would be horrified today, but a lot of the things I think people

are feeling right now, which is challenged and confused and in personal conflict and

feeling a lot of heaviness and also some hope is an experience that is, I think, almost

impossible not to have when you're looking at these photographs.

After writing my piece I stayed in touch with Robert Frank and I can tell you that the man

who took such complex photographs was a complex person himself.

First of all, Robert Frank was a person as full of humanity as his great photographs.

He died last year and I really miss him.

The Man Who Saw America, written by Nicholas Davidov, read by Malcolm Hillgarten.

...