The Tate Modern's exhibition of one of my favourite photographers, Robert Frank, hasn't met with universal approval (see this thoughtful reaction by Richard Dorment) but the opportunity to see such a retrospective, and to enjoy a season of Robert Frank films, including the seldom screened Cocksucker Blues (a film the Stones found so unflattering they went all out to have it suppressed), is not something to pass up. The Observer has an interview with Frank which begins by recalling Kerouac's fine tribute to him:
It was Jack Kerouac who first defined Robert Frank's genius, who found in it some echo of his own vision of a vast, broken-down, but still epic, America, peopled with restless and lonely dreamers. 'Robert Frank, Swiss, unobtrusive, nice,' wrote Kerouac in his now famous introduction to Frank's collection The Americans , 'with that little camera that he raises and snaps with one hand he sucked a sad poem right out of America on to film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world'.
