Robert Frank – Early years as a film photographer
Robert Frank was born in Zurich on 9 November 1924. His father Hermann Frank, an interior architect with Jewish roots, lost his German citizenship as a result of the National Socialist Reich Citizens Act and emigrated with his family to Switzerland, the homeland of his wife Rosa. Robert Frank attended primary and secondary school in Zurich and after leaving school completed a so-called Welschlandjahr at the Jomini Institute in Payerne. From 1941 to 1942 he studied the basics of photography under Hermann Segesser in Zurich and in 1942 began an apprenticeship in the studio of Michael Wolgensinger, where he was subsequently taken on as an employee on completion. He supervised many film projects for Gloria Film in Zurich where he was responsible for the stills, and also briefly assisted Victor Bouverat in Geneva. Robert Frank finally received Swiss citizenship in 1945.
The photographic book The Americans - a milestone in art photography
In 1947, Robert Frank travelled to New York where his photo portfolio attracted the attention of Alexei Brodowitsch, the art director for the well-known fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar. Brodowitsch consequently employed the young Swiss man as assistant photographer. Although he was given certain artistic freedom with the unorthodox use of a 35 mm Leica camera, Frank still had problems with the tight restrictions of fashion photography and soon resigned to work as a freelance photographer, receiving commissions from Harper’s Bazaar as well as Fortune, Life, McCall’s and Vogue. On his travels through Bolivia, England, France, Peru, Spain and Wales, Robert Frank met famous colleagues such as Elliot Erwitt, Walter Evans and Edward Steichen, collaborating from 1953 with Steichen on the important exhibitions Post-War European Photographers and The Family of Man in the Museum of Modern Art. The Guggenheim Fellowship in 1955 enabled him to work on a long-cherished dream project: the comprehensive pictorial reportage of the USA produced 28,000 photographs by 1957 from which 83 prints were selected for his groundbreaking photographic book The Americans. The book could only be published with the help of the French publisher Robert Delpire and included more text than Frank initially intended; despite this, it became one of the most influential photo volumes of the 20th century.
Pioneer of independent films
Robert Frank gained access to the circles around Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, who as writers were among the most important representative of the Beat Generation. Frank’s first foray into the medium of film was in 1959 with an unfinished play by Kerouac which served as the template for the experimental film Pull My Daisy, filmed with friends in a private flat. Over thirty further films were produced in the years that followed, without a budget and without the involvement of a professional film studio – the birth of the independent film. In 1969 Robert Frank moved to Canada, working only occasionally as a photographer. Following his divorce from his first wife, the English dancer Mary Lockspeiser, Frank married her friend June Leaf in 1975, a sculptor, and together they had two children: their daughter Andrea died in an airplane crash and their son Pablo committed suicide after years of illness. In memory of his daughter, Robert Frank set up a foundation to support young artists.
Robert Frank died at home in Nova Scotia on 9 September 2019.
Robert Frank - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz:
