This is Frank. What is his story?
I recently purchased an album of photographs of a Westerner in Japan. I’m hoping to make this album into a storybook, but don’t have much of a story to work with. All I know is that the man’s name is Frank and that the pictures seem to be made in the 1950′s.
Little Brown Mushroom needs your help in creating this story. We’ve posting a number of photographs of THE FRANK ALBUM on both an English website and a Japanese website. For each picture, we’re asking participants to write a short, paragraph-long story. This can be a factual description or imaginative speculation. Submissions in English, Japanese or any other language are welcome. Some of these submissions will be included in the final book. The deadline is August 25th.
Please visit THE FRANK ALBUM and tell us a story.
Thanks,
Alec Soth
Is there a deadline?
Taking the practical, Holmesian approach, I think Frank, from his haircut, works with the military in Japan, probably as a high-ranking enlisted man at a (Navy?) base, probably in Southern Japan — Sasebo? Very interested in Japanese culture, he takes a volunteer job teaching English conversation to the executives of a YKK zipper factory located near his base and becomes very friendly with a couple of these men, who invite him to share their activites — hiking to the summit of the Izu Oshima volcano, and going on photographic excursion days to take pictures of models hired to sit in iconic natural settings, going to resort towns featuring onsen, natural hot springs. When Frank receives a new posting and must leave Japan, his friends give him a warm, rousing goody-bye party.