Day Six continued in the middle. My Middle Ground trip had two middles. I posted earlier today about Lebanon, the center of the continental US, and the other was the sign in Kinsley, Kansas, 165 miles south. Why two? Well, Kinsley, nicknamed “Midway USA,” sits on U.S. Highway 50, marking an equal distance of about 1,561 miles in either direction between New York City and San Francisco.
My research for this trip started in 2016. Robert Frank was the original influence. His book, “The Americans,” originally published in 1958, has been in my collection for many years. He was a photographer who traveled the country funded by a Guggenheim fellowship, and like everything great, his work was not loved at first. It was critical in both content and technical skill, and it was not perfect in any way. One of my first photography teachers introduced me to his work, and it has stuck with me for 30 years.
I still live by the idea that photography is not meant to be perfect; it is the flaws that make it real. In a podcast I did leading up to this trip, I was quoted in the teaser page as saying, “Failing is a big part of photography; I love to fail!” That is Frank’s influence on me, and I have done all I can to pass that on. I push the camera’s limits and share less-than-perfect work all the time. The fact that Robert Frank journeyed through America to capture it on a less-than-perfect medium was fitting because this country is far from perfect, and I mean that with respect and experience, not as a slight. I assume Frank meant the same thing, and that might be why he was criticized.
What does this have to do with this photo? Nothing obvious. This is not the part where I tell you Robert Frank took a similar photo, or that he stood here. As far as I know, he did not.
Todd Webb did.
Todd Webb was another photographer of the same era. He too was given grants from the Guggenheim Foundation to photograph America at the exact same time as Frank, but neither knew of the other’s project. I had read they met years earlier at a New Year’s Eve party, but their trips were entirely separate. Yet if you look at the photos side by side, the similarities are incredible. The biggest difference is that Frank’s work was published in the 1950s, while Webb’s work was lost to time until it was found in a steamer trunk in California in 2017. I remember reading about it right after it was discovered. He was a known photographer with plenty of published work, but that specific trip took him years, traveling months at a time by foot, bike, and even a Vespa, and the work was not seen until 60-some years later.
Here is where I join the circle. I followed the story of Webb’s discovered work, which was eventually combined with Frank’s and traveled the country as a museum display. My daughter and I caught it at the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Massachusetts, in July 2023. The show was remarkable, and I even made it a dailypic. The photo I chose to feature that day in the post was of this very sign, taken by Webb in 1955, but not seen until 2017 and not printed until 2023. Only ten were printed, and all are sold or in museums. I own print number six; it is hanging in my studio right now.
Now the sign has changed and been updated, but the spirit is the same, and it sits right here in Kinsley where Webb stopped and took his photo. I did the same. Not only did I take a photo of it, but I also shot it with the exact same model camera he used, a 1950s Rolleiflex Twin Lens loaded with black and white film.
That camera has been in the shop twice in the last year just trying to get it ready. It leaks light when it feels like it, and to be honest, it did not behave well on the trip. But that goes right back to the failing idea I just shared: photos don’t need to be perfect to be shared.
The negatives were processed yesterday, and there is a light leak right in the middle of the frame, pun intended. I took nine shots with the Rollei. I also shot it with every camera I had with me, including my phone, drone, Widelux, Hasselblad 500c, and Hasselblad X2D, but the Rollei is the legacy this sign deserves. I got one clean frame, and it is the closest to the actual angle Webb shot.
I will admit I teared up when I saw the sign. I pulled in and said, “Holy Shit,” to absolutely no one. Six days of driving to get to that sign, and there it was. I stayed there for over an hour.
In processing the files last night, I had an idea. The nine frames make a square, the native format of the camera is square, I love square photos, so why not share all the frames in one shot? I will still print the decent single frame. I am going to bring it to the Woodshed in Franklin, the shop that framed my original print of Webb’s, and I will hang them together. But these nine frames make a cool story as a team.
I am not a spiritual man. It is a choice we all have the right to make, and that is mine. But, and this is a huge “but” for me, I look at that light leak in the middle of my middle photos as Todd Webb’s input in some way. He is in my photo, and I leave it at that.
I thank Mr. Frank for introducing me to Mr. Webb, and I thank Mr. Webb for pointing me to a sign, and both of them for my trip.
tr/trp
