Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Robert Frank was a Swiss-born American photographer who embarked on a two year journey across the U.S., capturing the people of America. His trip began in 1955 and passed through Wyoming, yet many of these photos have never been seen or published. That is, until now. His photographs from his travels through Dubois, Casper, Lander, Fort Washakie, and South Pass are now on display at the Wyoming State Museum in Cheyenne. Robin Everett, a processing archivist with the exhibit, sat down with Wyoming Public Radio’s Susan Izzo to discuss the exhibit.
Susan Izzo: What kind of images did Robert Frank take of Wyoming?
Robin Everett: His goal in his Guggenheim Fellowship application, he said that he wanted to document the culture spreading across the United States. And so the pictures that you're going to see are people. People walking across the street. People at rodeos. People in cafeterias. There's some Native Americans at a cemetery in Fort Washakie. There's a prom in 1956 in Casper. So, you're going to see just a little bit of everything.
SI: Do you notice, because you've looked at all these images, do you notice kind of like a theme for what it was really representing about Wyoming for this time period?
RE: There really is no theme. It's a wide range because the one thing I notice is that you just see like I said, people in their environment. None of them are posed. He did not let them know that he was taking their pictures. And you'll see that none of them are looking at the camera or eyeballing him, with the exception of one where some guys are hiding behind a tree. But, other than that it's just still shots, candid shots that he walked around and took. And out of the Guggenheim Fellowship, he published a book called, “The Americans”. And none of these images show up in that book, but they're the same type of images. People on the street, people doing their work, but none of them are where they see him taking the picture.
SI: Do we have any idea as to why none of these images of Wyoming were published in the book or why they haven't been published really anywhere else?
RE: You know, I don't know. When he did his Guggenheim Fellowship, he traveled all around the states and he took over 25,000 images total. When he published his book, he only selected 83. So I don't know if he has used other images that were not in the book, in other places. One that he did use in a book was, A Woman on a Horse, and you'll see that one. I have called her Aunt Dottie. I've nicknamed her Aunt Dottie because I just want people to walk in and see a picture and say, “Oh, there's my aunt,” or “there's my mom”. So that's why I kind of nicknamed some of them.
SI: I think definitely in Wyoming, a lot of people can have that association with seeing a woman on a horse. Very familial. What kind of impact do you think seeing these images would have for Wyoming residents today?
RE: I think that they would realize that they have a place.
And that Frank thought enough of them to take their image and use it. Also it would give them an opportunity to look at how life was back in 1956. One of our goals was to have people come in and look at them and hopefully recognize family in them and then start an intergenerational conversation about them. Even if they didn't recognize family in them then people would see them and say, “Oh yeah, this is what it was like,” and start those conversations.
SI: Do you have any other information that you think is important about this exhibit?
RE: Right now, it's at the State Museum and we hope to have it stay at least until the middle of April. We're working with the June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation to see if we can have it travel around the state. He did go into five different communities that I've identified through the photos. So we'd like to be able to take it back to some of those communities and let them see what was going on during that time.
He took over 20 rolls of film, and so we don't have all of them up, but we do have some that he had printed. Then also we have contact sheets. Then for those that we weren't able to print, we have a QR code and the Foundation created an online catalog that they can go in and view them all.
