Evergreen Review (no. 15, Nov-Dec 1960)

Evergreen Review (no. 15, Nov-Dec 1960)

Political Rally, Chicago 1956

Another early Evergreen Review cover with a Robert Frank image from 'The Americans'. This photograph was made at a rally in Chicago for then presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, who ran unsuccessfully against five-star General and former Commander of Allied Forces during World War II, Dwight D. Eisenhower. Frank's image seems haphazardly made, almost anti-compositional, with all its information coming in from the edges. The tuba player becomes a comically alien hybrid of man and machine; anonymous and isolated, but no less so than the figures on either side of him. As a reference to the American electoral process, the image is funny, frightening and sad.
The date of this issue, November 1960, puts its publication precisely one year after the preseidential election that followed Eisenhower v. Stevenson, in which Eisenhower's Vice-President, Richard M. Nixon, lost by a very small margain to the Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy. KB