Robert Frank (born 1924)
Robert Frank was born in Zurich Switzerland, in 1924, to Jewish parents. As Frank grew to adulthood during World War II, he began his formal training in photography with a staid, old view camera, eventually using a 35mm range finder. Frank moved to New York in 1947 to study under the famed editor Alexey Brodovitch, who encouraged him to take fashion photographs. Frank quickly found himself drawn to documentary subjects and began to travel throughout the U. S. During the ostensibly optimistic Eisenhower-era Frank’s dark grainy images reflected the tensions in American society, a viewpoint that contrasted sharply with those of his peers. The project culminated in the seminal work of his career, The Americans, (New York, 1954).
In the late 1950s, Frank began to work more with film and took fewer still photographs. In the 1970s, he returned to photography to explore more personal subjects including the death of his daughter Andrea and the mental illness of his son Pablo. His current work often incorporates text and photomontage in carefully constructed images.
Information courtesy of Swann Galleries, October 2003