Awakening the Eye: Robert Frank's American Cinema

Description

George Kouvaros surveys Frank's films and videos and places them in the larger context of experimentation in American art and literature since World War II. By examining Frank's films and videos, including Pull My Daisy, Me and My Brother, and Cocksucker Blues, in the framework of his more widely recognized photographic achievements, Kouvaros develops a model of cross-media history in which photography, film, and video are complicit in the search for fresh forms of visual expression. Awakening the Eye is an insightful, compelling, and, at times, moving account of Frank's determination to forge a personal connection between the circumstances of his life and the media in which he works.

George Kouvaros is senior lecturer in the School of Theatre, Film, and Dance at the University of New South Wales, Australia.

"While showing great assurance in talking about Robert Frank's still photography, George Kouvaros not only gives the films due consideration on their own terms, but also in the way they reflected Frank's overall art."-Stephen Brooke, York University "This book is a must read for those interested in Frank or avant-garde cinema."-CHOICE "This oeuvre endeavors to take its topics on their own terms, seeking to divine what lies at their heart. Awakening the Eye is the latest in George Kouvaros's ongoing realist criticism, productively enervating Frank's audio-visions from the inside and thereby remaking them anew for contemporary scholarship."-Screening the Past