Book Review: Long story short.

Untitled [Dinosaur Balloon], November 25, 1969, Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

By Chloe Rehfield

We create our own narratives to make sense of life. The storytelling gene is innate to humans, which means it is impossible for us to absorb external input without the constant formation of millions of little stories that cultivate into a congruous whole. Photography is a controllable medium in which humans tell a story; when a frame of reference and subject are chosen, a perspective-specific slice of life is preserved within a sixtieth of a second. Any piece of art attempts to visually arrange the artist’s opinion through a neatly confined medium that can either transcend its time or define it.

Contortions on the Ground, 1887, Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

For the Fraenkel Gallery’s 40th anniversary, Jeffrey Fraenkel and Frish Brandt released Long story short, a hefty-yet-selective curation, an endeavor to abridge the San Francisco gallery’s art history since its opening in 1979. The book features sixty photographs and mixed media that have been showcased over Fraenkel’s 360-plus exhibitions, spanning works from the nineteenth century to the present. The chosen artwork chronicles history through the eyes of the esteemed artists Fraenkel has represented while attempting to delineate the evolving ways that humans use the lens to tell a story. Fraenkel’s overarching mission is to “understand photographs in light of other pictures“, and Long story short pulls the best pieces to spark the conversation on the role images play in an ever-changing culture.

110th Street Harlem Blues, ca. 1972 © Romare Bearden Foundation, courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York

Long story short is not an aesthetic coffee table tome displaying vibrant, pretty pictures, but rather it is a flipbook of photographic history according to Fraenkel. The images highlighted are those with which you’re probably already familiar: the likes of Man Ray, Richard Avedon and Diane Arbus spatter the pages; as well as snapshots of iconic moments such as Buzz Aldrin standing next to the flag on the moon; portraits of James Joyce and Rembrandt; an interpretation of Klimt’s Adele Bloch-Bauer that isn’t collaged but assembled in a transparent light box.

Untitled [Banjo], 1923 © Man Ray 2015 Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

While the book features its fair share of popular American and European contemporary art, Fraenkel is careful to include works of all mediums by anonymous artists or newer ones, like Liz Deschenes and Wardell Milan. Each iteration mirrors a theme of cultural importance during its corresponding time period. The 1800s valued individuals of power, which is made obvious through an abundance of portraits. Flip to the mid-twentieth century, and photos of the auto industry, planes, skyscrapers and inventions are in the spotlight. As we race toward the modern age, art deco collages, film posters and abstract sculptures are prevalent. 

Linda, Hollywood, CA, 2018 © Katy Grannan, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Through the exploration of Fraenkel’s chosen photographers, known or unknown, Long story short offers an extensive commentary on the changing times, drawing similarities between some of the first photo takers to the post-modern mixed media artists of today. This book unravels history through an extremely nuanced lens, yet unearths a grain of truth amongst its pages of subjectivity: the image remains a powerful tool that provokes an automatic visceral experience in a way that no written words are able. That is the inexplicable magic of the story a photograph can tell -- the unwitting narrative of emotion.