Robert Frank

Robert Frank is most well known for The Americans, a book of photographs published in 1958 that revealed quotidian elements of American life through his objective perspective. Frank immigrated to New York in 1947 and began his career as a fashion photographer for Harper’s Bazaar before being granted a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1955 that would support his seminal project. He became known for his unorthodox cropping and lighting, and was highly respected by the Beat generation of poets and artists. In 1959 he began making films that channeled his interest in documentation—despite their intensive planning and focus, they often appeared improvisational. His later photography is autobiographical, grounded in a process-based manipulation of negatives and text that structure his personal narrative in multiple frames. 

Frank has exhibited his photographs at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Kunsthaus, Zürich, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Long Beach Museum of Art, California, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Reina Sofia, Madrid, Centro Cultural de Belém, Tate Modern, London, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, among many others. His films have been screened at Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany, The American Film institute, Washington D.C., Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and the Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan, to name a few. Frank has received a number of awards over the course of his fifty-year career, including the Edward MacDowell Medal in 2002 and Capa Infinity Award in 2000, among many others.