Allen Frame, known for gritty black and white photography inspired by film-noir and Italian Neorealism, was approached by New Directions for cover images for novels by the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño. The house began publishing Bolaño’s fiction and poetry in translation in 2003, and the work caught on like wildfire, according to publisher Barbara Epler in a New Yorker online interview. She was familiar with Frame’s book “Detour,” published in 2001, from which she made most of her selections.

The nine photographs, along with several related images, is currently on view at Gitterman Gallery with the title, “Dialogue with Bolaño.” Shot at some of the same locations as Bolaño’s novels, each image captures a nighttime scene suffused with a sense of mystery that hints at vaguely menacing secrets and subtexts.

Allen Frame, Mariachis, Mexico City, 2000. ©Allen Frame, courtesy Gitterman Gallery.

In an interview for New Directions’ blog, Frame said, “Most of the cover images were taken before I even knew Bolaño’s work. The ‘dialogue’ is a coincidental overlapping of interests and atmosphere, and I am thrilled by the association since he is now my favorite writer. I don’t work commercially, so this is a kind of rare commercial experience for me, having these cover images, and I am very happy when friends discover that the image on the book they’re reading is mine.

 “When I started reading Bolaño in the last decade, I was overcome by finding a literary voice of my generation that I could identify with so strongly….I read both The Savage Detectives and 2666 while in Mexico. I was there this summer and reading Woes of the True Policeman. Maybe the biggest way he’s influenced me is to send me back to my archive and make me want to explore early work I did in Mississippi in the '70s. Also, there’s a self-portrait in the exhibition that I did this summer in a Mexico City hotel room that I feel was partly inspired by his work.”

Allen Frame, Florence, 1996. ©Allen Frame, courtesy Gitterman Gallery.

Allen Frame | Dialogue with Bolaño continues through January 11, 2014. Gitterman Gallery, 41 East 57^th Street, #1103, NY, NY. Allen Frame interview on ASX. Article about Roberto Bolaño in Salon.com

Allen Frame lives in New York where he teaches photography at the School of Visual Arts, Pratt Institute, and the International Center of Photography. His book Detour, a compilation of his photographs over a decade, was published by Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg in 2001. He is represented by Gitterman Gallery in New York where he has had solo shows in 2005, 2009, and 2013. His work has been included in exhibitions this year at the Centro Luigi Di Sarro and at Acta International in Rome and at Florida Mining Gallery in Jacksonville, Fl. and in the last few years at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Fotomuseum in Winterthur, Switzerland, and the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art in Mississippi. He is an Executive Producer of the feature film FOUR, directed by Joshua Sanchez and starring Wendell Pierce. He has been the recipient of grants from the Penny McCall Foundation, the Peter Reed Foundation, Creative Time, Art Matters, CECArtslink and others. In 1990 he co-created Electric Blanket, an epic slide show about AIDS, which toured throughout the U.S. and to Norway, the U.K., Germany, Hungary, Japan, and in 2003, to Russia. He was born in Mississippi in 1951 and graduated from Harvard University in 1974.