Main idea: loss of a master but focus on the “human-ness of the man,” unsentimental perspective, reinforces the philosophy of the photographer
Rhetorical devices: appositives (detail), situational irony (photography master/no “documented death”) imagery (sensory detail: death, pants, wife, swoon, countenance, death moment), pathos, statement on comparisons, photo motif
By continuously suggesting the irony in the death and locale of Robert Frank, Charles LeDuffemphasizes the humility of the man rather than the loss of a giant in “Robert Frank’s Unsentimental Journey.” This perspective reinforces his belief that all humans are similar upon death and may pass on without the need of a “picture.” LeDuffbegins his article with the griminess of the soup shop that became the final resting place for the iconic photographer Robert Frank. He describes “the last human being it’s been said to discover anything new behind a viewfinder collapsed in a filthy Chinese soup shop and no one thought to bring along a camera” (#). LeDuff’s perspective demonstrates more than the factual evidence for he presents the mantra with which Frank wanted to live his life. Even though Frank was an internationally recognized figure, he was most likely to be found hovering within the bowels of humanity. As a Beatnik, Frank presented a subversive perspective and wanted to do so in a blunt fashion. His death, as presented by LeDuff, highlights this philosophy and strengthens Frank’s personal ideology.
The author illustrates the ironic setting of Frank’s death as a locale that was most acceptable for a lens. “The city is a photographic dream, a 2700 year-old dollhouse of clay brick, camels, coal embers, and carved cornices” (LeDuff #). While the setting is a dream for photographers, no one appeared with even “a sketching tablet” to eternalize the death of Robert Frank (#). Frank was the artist behind The Americans and became so widely respected that his prints would sell for a half a million dollars; yet even in a location as perfect as Beijing for a picture, he remains outside the frame (LeDuff). While in life he was a “titan of post-war films” in death he is nothing but a feeble man trying to have a hot bowl of soup (LeDuff #).
This bowl of soup becomes pivotal to LeDuff’s work for it suggests the humbleness of Frank as one who lived a simple life. Like the soup, Frank’s pants become demonstrative of the irony found between the way he lived his life and how others might perceive an award-winning public figure. Frank wore the same tattered pants for three years, yet Frank “would be expected by Chinese authorities to make speeches…a junior Communist party official was dispatched to purchase a pair of trousers” (#). Robert Frank did not have the starched facade necessary to be presentable to the Chinese government, yet it was the Robert Frank, dressed in tattered clothing, feeble, eating soup in the slum that died and should be remembered.