In 1957, aspiring photographer Robert Frank met Jack Kerouac at a party for the writer's recently published novel "On the Road." Frank himself had just come back from his own road trip, an eerily similar journey into the real heart of America.
Funded by a Guggenheim Fellowship, Frank spent nine months driving more than 10,000 miles across America and shooting like mad. Of the 27,000 photos he took, 83 would comprise his era-defining photobook "The Americans," which included rundown motels, ghostly highways, diner jukeboxes and, most of all, the faces of people on society's margins, those whom no one ever bothered to point a camera at.
For Frank, a photo was less about composition than capturing a moment. "I was a hunter, moved by intuition," says the photographer in "Don't Blink: Robert Frank" (Japan title: "Don't Blink: Robert Frank no Utsushita Jidai"), a revealing documentary about the reclusive artist by Laura Israel, a longtime collaborator and editor.