Poetic eye

It is not Robert Frank’s fault, but one might think from the hype — ‘arguably the world’s greatest living photographer’, etc. — that he had invented documentary photography. When Humphrey Spender, who did for Mass Observation and Picture Post in the 1930s and 1940s what Frank did for social documentation in the 1950s, was similarly praised, he pointed out that photography had been an instrument of social change since the 1870s. And the photo-journalist’s favourite camera, the 35mm Leica, was invented in 1914.

Spender, who at 94 is 14 years Frank’s senior, abandoned photography for painting long ago, but coincidentally also has a photographic show, Moroccan Diary (at the Photographers’ Gallery, 5 Great Newport Street, London WC2, until 23 November), celebrating the republication of a 1936 travelogue.

Frank left his Swiss homeland in 1947, the same time as Cartier-Bresson helped to found the photo-journalist agency Magnum. His first job in New York was for Harper’s Bazaar, whose star photographers included Cartier-Bresson and Bill Brandt.