A Portrait That Still Haunts
June 14, 2020 2:44 PM   Subscribe

“Trolley — New Orleans” is all about division. Two rows of windows, each window a frame. NYT

From Swiss American photographer Robert Frank's book The Americans, and chosen as one of TIME magazine's top 100 photos.

Previously
posted by blue shadows (6 comments total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
What a gorgeous format. It kept going on and on. The page is subtitled "Close Read"... has the NYTimes done others of these?
posted by painquale at 3:05 PM on June 14, 2020 [1 favorite]


This piece about The New Yorker's upcoming George Floyd cover use the same format to equally powerful effect.
posted by Paul Slade at 3:27 PM on June 14, 2020 [2 favorites]


I feel that I can appreciate the photo more after reading Lubow's critique, and I acknowledge that the presentation was an integral and not merely incidental part of it. Nonetheless, the swooping UI elements made me feel seasick, and I resented not being able to look at the photo myself, as a whole, and then zoom into the things remarked upon.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:55 PM on June 14, 2020 [2 favorites]


has the NYTimes done others of these?
They did one about Eakins's "Gross Clinic" (thread)
posted by neroli at 5:47 PM on June 14, 2020 [1 favorite]


I really like this presentation and loved the Eakins clinic painting. I really like looking at art, but I just flat don't get it, so I love the chance to "practice" - say what I see and think, and then compare to an opinion w/some expertise behind it.

This one though - I don't know that I would interpret the abstraction effect - especially comment about the steel side of the streetcar and bolts, etc, to be an important element of the composition. The framing and grid absolutely.

I think the comment about the focal point is interesting where he talks about the hands, but I see the expressions - expressions from a position of privilege vs without (maybe, not sure about the woman in the rear-most window).

I'm surprised no comment about the symmetry, maybe too obvious. But people arranged perfectly symmetrical; expressions symmetrical if you consider expressions of dominant vs powerless (the boy owning, the girl cyring; the woman glaring, the man forlorn; the front and rear-most hard to really see.... Finally, ages of people symmetrical, too.

The person behind the children seems to me clearly a white guy with hands on the seatback looking down - i just see a guy reading; shadowy presence not really.
posted by everythings_interrelated at 9:13 AM on June 15, 2020 [1 favorite]


Some of these interpretations are kind of clumsy and pat ("If the mullion resembles a pillar, how right that is, because this boy is on his way to becoming a pillar of the establishment" is kind of extraordinary), but like others I appreciate the format. I don't get why the initial image is cropped in my browser (even when maxed out on a 1080p monitor) so that you just get a sliver of the women left and right, but I guess that's a decision (an error?) in the making of this specific page.
posted by cincinnatus c at 3:16 PM on June 15, 2020


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