Robert Frank’s wonderful book “The Americans” was much reviled and criticized when it was published more than a half century ago, but changed the way photographers look at the world and has always been an inspiration to me. One reviewer called it a “sad poem,” but I thought it was a beautiful poem.

When I look at some images, I think “this could be a Robert Frank” picture.

Frank did not look for beautiful or glamorous subjects, he looked for images that capture the lives of ordinary Americans, snapshots of the real lives of real people. I thought of Frank when Maria and I stopped for lunch at the funky old Hillsborough Diner in Hillsborough, New Hampshire this week on our way to see the ocean.

We both felt as if we had been brought back in time to another place, a place that brought back a feeling of timelessness and community. Everyone in the diner seemed to know one another, and the cooks and waitresses spent as much time talking to the diners as they did running to the kitchen.

The pace was slower, the interactions more intimate, it spoke of a more peaceful and simple time. I love taking photos like this and my new black and white monochrome camera is helping me to do it, and to honor the great courage and penetrating vision of Robert Frank.

In this photograph, a waitress leans over the counter to talk more intimately with a friend who is eating there, another woman leans over her soup hungrily, the whole diner speaks of a kinder, simpler time. This is a focus of my photography now.