<note><![CDATA[© Robert Frank, courtesy of Pace / MacGill Gallery, New York]]></note>
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<title><![CDATA[My FatherΓÇÖs Coat]]></title>
<title2><![CDATA[<br>2001 (detail)]]></title2>
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<body><![CDATA[Robert Frank turns 80 this year, but still continues to experiment and push photographic aesthetics. In My FatherΓÇÖs Coat, the polish of the 1950s is replaced by scratchy innovation; the Leica camera by lo-fi Polaroids. Progressive close-ups take you nearer the objectΓÇÖs heart, or the photographerΓÇÖs story, yet everything is open. ΓÇ£Something must be left for the onlooker,ΓÇ¥ Frank once observed. ΓÇ£He must have something to see. It is not all said for him.ΓÇ¥ FrankΓÇÖs photographs from the past two decades create a vision of alternative beauty: they are defaced, destroyed and reinvented. In his 2001 book Hold Still ΓÇô Keep Going (a Beckettesque title), fragmented and unfinished images are covered with scratches and scribbles. He revisits work from London/Wales, and Black White and Things, but presents them together like film frames, jagged and gritty. A critic has described FrankΓÇÖs fascination with ΓÇ£finding the chaos in thingsΓÇ¥, but itΓÇÖs hard to tell if he is really trying to reach some inner truth or playing with viewersΓÇÖ perceptions. His manipulations transform photography into art in its most physical sense. He writes on Polaroid negatives, scribbles ideas and impulses, overexposes and damages prints. Frank best summed up his motivation in the 1985 film Home Improvements: ΓÇ£IΓÇÖm always doing the same images ΓÇô IΓÇÖm always looking outside, trying to look inside. Trying to tell something thatΓÇÖs true. But maybe nothing is really true. Except whatΓÇÖs out there.ΓÇ¥]]></body>
