Sharon Collins is the elevator girl of Robert Frank’s famous image “Elevator — Miami Beach, 1955” from The Americans. Collection Philadelphia Museum of Art, purchased with funds contributed by Dorothy Norman, 1969. Copyright Robert Frank.
“Robert Frank, Swiss, unobtrusive, nice, with that little camera that he raises and snaps with one hand he sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world. To Robert Frank I now give this message: You got eyes. And I say: That little ole lonely elevator girl looking up sighing in an elevator full of blurred demons, what’s her name & address?”
So says Jack Kerouac, in his introduction to Robert Frank’s book of photographs, The Americans.
Now, read a really great story. Just imagine finding out Jack Kerouac wanted your number 50 years later! Here’s what Sharon has to say about it now:
“He saw in me something that most people didn’t see. I have a big smile and a big laugh, and I’m usually pretty funny. So people see one thing in me. And I suspect Robert Frank and Jack Kerouac saw something that was deeper. That only people who were really close to me can see. It’s not necessarily loneliness, it’s … dreaminess.”
I’ve got a couple of similar anecdotes in my family repertoire, but they’d be far too long for a blog post.
I happened to see this yesterday and the question forced itself upon me. The mod pop star and the uncompromising revolutionary poet – one who sang of a “strange town” and one who lived in one – one who served the Style Council and one who served Cromwell’s Council – one who sang “Going Underground” in The Jam, and one who got himself out of a jam by “going underground’ – could they by any chance be related?
Baroque in Hackney 