Taking a Hands-on Look at Robert Frank

Lucy Gallun: Thanks so much for being in conversation today on the occasion of the exhibition Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue at MoMA. I know you to be a very open, sincere person. I can’t imagine you being dishonest. But you have a great story about the only thing that you ever stole: a book. It was Robert Frank’s photobook The Lines of My Hand, first published in 1972. Tell me about that incident, and why you felt so compelled to have this particular object.

Dayanita Singh: It was the late 1980s, and I was a student at ICP [International Center of Photography, New York]. Up until then, everything that I knew about photography was really [Henri] Cartier-Bresson and the “decisive moment.” Living in India, I didn’t get to see a lot of photobooks. What we knew most of all was Cartier-Bresson, and photographers at that time aspired to be like him. That was the one role model for all photography. And so when I saw Robert Frank’s work in one of the classes, I thought, “Wow, this is something else.” When I saw The Lines of My Hand much later, I remember feeling I couldn’t become an artist without possessing this book, but it was $40, way out of my budget. There was no question of spending even a fraction of that on a book. I had only a small travel allowance, so everything was very tight. I spoke with my friend Michael and I said, “Look, I really need to have this book.” And so we went to the ICP bookshop one morning. I wore a big black coat and Michael got into an argument with the storekeeper and while they were arguing, just as we had planned, I slid The Lines of My Hand into my coat and then we walked out. And then we ran, like in the movies. And I promise you, it’s the only thing I’ve stolen in my life!

But I knew it was a life-changing moment, and I understood how a book can change your life. That impact of Robert Frank never went away.

Robert Frank. The Lines of My Hand. 1972

What was it about The Lines of My Hand that impacted you so deeply and immediately?

You know, the first thing I remember, and the thing I’ll never forget, was that he had such disregard for photography. He could scratch the negatives, he could splice prints together, he could put in photographs of his own life along with images from Peru or wherever else he was traveling. He had done away with all the rules that we were being taught, the rules that I had grown up with. People often ask me, Who do you admire in photography? And really, it’s Robert Frank, on a completely different level than all the other people I admire and respect. Frank gave me the confidence—that book gave me the confidence—to feel that I could do my own thing with photography, that I don’t have to follow the rules, which as a student, you can imagine, is so crucial. So when I say it was life-changing, it’s in that respect, even as I also had wonderful teachers at that time at ICP, in a program run by Abigail Heyman. So, that was the reason I had to own that book because it’s a book you keep going back to, a touchstone.

It is actually fitting to imagine you tucking a book away in your big coat, given that you have since constructed your own book jackets—with special pockets to hold all the books! At the same time, you aren’t the person I would expect to sneak a book out of the museum shop, given that you’ve also talked about how in your work you are sneaking books into the museum space. When institutions have invited you to present your work, you surprise them by bringing your suitcase full of books. And instead of showing a suite of prints, you’ve hung books up on the museum walls. In the exhibition Life Dances On at MoMA, we’re highlighting Frank’s work across multiple forms, including the book form. Frank’s photobook was so meaningful to you, so what do you think about audiences having the chance to look at and consider books in the space of a museum? What’s the impact and meaning of this gesture?

Well, in that respect, I’m sneaking in more than the book. Because I’m saying that when you have a quarter-tone or a tri-tone publication printed by my publisher, Steidl, it’s actually more beautiful than the digital prints that I make. Often the book feels like the real work. And digital prints on the wall feel like a catalogue of the book! I don’t see why we have to have prints on the wall when you can have such wonderful printing. Plus I love the idea that someone can come to my exhibition and then they can go to the bookshop and buy that same exhibition for 50 euros. Photography has the potential to create this other art market because it’s reproducible. We don’t have to follow the art world’s dictates about how photography becomes valuable, because it can be accessible and valuable at the same time.

It’s wonderful that you have my work Museum of Chance in MoMA’s collection, but that’s what got me thinking: How do I make something for my friends? Because not everyone can come to MoMA when the museum is displaying it, you know, and who knows when it’ll be displayed again. And that’s when I went to Gerhard [Steidl] and said, “Can we make a miniature Museum Bhaven?” And he said, “But you’ve already made a book called Museum of Chance.” I said, “I’ll change the name. I’ll call it Ongoing Museum. And we’ll have different images than in the book.” And so we did that. But the fact that you can bring your children to the exhibition, and they can take the exhibition home with them, as maybe the first artwork that they’re going to have for their own. I hope within my lifetime, that shift will happen, where the book can be considered as valuable as the “art.” If we make books with the idea of an exhibition, then why do we need prints except for scale?

So, if you want to show at MoMA my Zakir Hussain work, for instance, other than the few prints that are in the Museum of Chance, I would say to you, Lucy, buy 44 copies of the Zakir Hussain maquette. I’ve also made DIY instructions on how to make exhibitions out of my books. And after the exhibition, you can sell the books in the bookshop with the provenance of having been shown at MoMA.

Dayanita Singh discusses her book Museum Bhavan at MoMA in 2019.

Dayanita Singh. Zakir Hussain. 1986

Speaking of Zakir Hussain, your earliest book, I’ve been spending a lot of time with Frank’s own words, which are at the forefront of Life Dances On. But in 1975, just a couple of years after The Lines of My Hand was published, he was still telling an interviewer, “I think that’s one of the hardest things to do, combine words and photographs.” And of course, you have also been doing that memorably since the beginning, with Zakir Hussain, which included text that you developed through talking with Hussain. And then I always think about how in your book, Myself Mona Ahmed, the letters with the publisher are included so memorably alongside the images. Did you make a conscious decision, from the earliest time that you were thinking about books, to weave texts in with photography?

Something I forgot to say earlier about my admiration for Frank was the way he brought text in, in his own way, and not as a caption to the photograph. Until then, I had not seen that. So, it blew my mind. And it gave me a certain confidence about a book that I was very ashamed of when I went to ICP, which was my Zakir Hussain book, because I had things written in Zakir’s handwriting. I was just a kid, what did I know about classical music? But, somehow, I had the audacity to think that this book was going to be important. And it never occurred to me to make a book without text. Why would you make a book that was only photographs? And so that followed through in Mona as well. It just had to be. And then I think as I entered the art world, I had the impression that words were not appreciated alongside photography. And I started to feel that a photograph can actually go where there is no vocabulary.

So then for many years, I decided, “Okay, no text.” More recently, I want very solid text, because now I see my work also as an archive and a document for the next generation, maybe. I feel like I want more substance. And if text will bring me that, then I will do it. I have also just made posters with my publisher Gerhard Steidl, and I’m getting very excited and finally have the confidence to say, “Yes, I want text on my images.” Again, something that was never permissible in photography, you would do that only in a poster. I think seeing Robert Frank’s work New Year’s Day 1981—Be Happy, Mabou—in which he adds text to his photograph—was really inspiring.

Robert Frank. New Year’s Day 1981—Be Happy, Mabou. 1981

Be Happy would have been in later editions of the The Lines of My Hand, as it’s from 1981. He went back and changed the order and added new pictures when he republished the book. It was a new iteration of the idea.

Yes, I also have the later edition of the book. And that’s my point as well with Frank, that he did what he wanted to do. He didn’t listen to the publisher saying a reprint has to be exactly the same.

Robert Frank was also a devoted correspondent. He loved writing letters and postcards. He collected postcards of Niagara Falls even though he claimed to have never visited. But he loved having postcards of it. The curator Sarah Greenough has written a beautiful essay about his letters for the exhibition catalogue. How has letter writing, or that kind of exchange, also shaped your own work?

Yes, letters are really important. Some of my photobooks are written as letters, because they were made for friends with whom I was traveling, and those friends were often amazing writers. How can you write to a great writer to say what an amazing trip together that was? And so I thought, “Okay, I’ll do it in my language, and I’ll make them a book of photographs.” I made a book for my friend, the writer and editor Liz Jobey, after I visited her house in Yorkshire. And after she received the book she said, “I hope you’re making two of these because one day you can have a guerrilla exhibition with all your friends.” We had this plan that all my friends could then show their exhibition wherever they were in the world. But I would also still have a set of all the letter-books myself. And making a book of course is about many things, editing and sequencing and all that. But I can’t start a book without an addressee. And the addressee could be Robert Frank, it could be Italo Calvino, it could be you. So, if I’m in conversation with Calvino, then it’s a certain kind of edit. But if I’m in conversation with someone else it’s another kind of edit. So, the idea of letter writing continues with this idea of the addressee.

Later, Robert Frank signed a copy of the Pantheon Books edition (1989) of The Lines of My Hand for Dayanita Singh.

In 1997, you were the addressee of a grant. It was a decade after you’d got your hands on The Lines of My Hand. And it was a grant from the Andrea Frank Foundation.

In ’97 I got a call from Robert Frank’s lawyers to say, “Robert Frank would like to give you a grant.” And I thought it was one of my friends playing a prank on me. But they said, “It is in memory of his daughter, Andrea Frank. He set up this grant for visual artists that nobody would support. And how much money would you need to continue the work you’ve been doing about families?” And I said, “$10,000.” And $10,000 was like $100,000 today, but even $10 million today couldn’t compare to that $10,000 then! And I really thought it was a prank, but then the check arrived. I got worried and I called his lawyers and said, “What does he want? I can’t give him prints. These are pictures of families.” And they said, “Robert says you can throw it in the sea if you want, but this grant is for you.” And that also shaped what I would do later in life, which is to continue to try and support younger photographers as quietly as possible with nothing requested in return. I used to leave 100 rolls of film for photographers I thought should have them—that they shouldn’t run out of film at least! And I think of it as passing it on. And then, the photographers I have helped continue the gesture. So it’s like Robert Frank’s generosity is spreading across parts of India.

Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue is on view at MoMA through January 11.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.