Frank, Robert, 1924–, Swiss-American photographer and filmmaker. Frank is considered the pioneer of the "snapshot aesthetic," in which the documentary image is rendered bluntly and without conscious artistry. His best-known work is The Americans (1959), a composite portrait of U.S. culture made in terms of telling glimpses of clutter and trivia. These powerfully composed images were considered gross and shocking when they were first published; they soon became an intrinsic part of American iconography, greatly influencing other artists in many media. Frank's films, also documentary in style, include Pull My Daisy (1959–60, with Alfred Leslie), OK, End Here (1963), and Me and My Brother (1965–68).

Bibliography

See his book of photographs Lines of My Hand (1972).

Frank, Robert

(born Nov. 9, 1924, Zürich, Switz.) Swiss-born U.S. photographer. In the 1940s he worked as a fashion photographer for Harper's Bazaar in Paris. He abandoned fashion work in 1947 to travel in the U.S. and South America and explore the use of the 35-mm camera. His collection The Americans (1959), with its gritty, discordant images of 1950s America, had enormous influence and established him as a major figure. After 1959 Frank turned to filmmaking; his short film Pull My Daisy (1959), a collaboration with Jack Kerouac, became an underground classic. A major later collection is Robert Frank: Moving Out (1994).

Frank, Robert (1924– ) photographer, filmmaker; born in Zurich, Switzerland. A free-lance fashion and film photographer in Zurich (1943–47), he emigrated to New York in 1947 where he was befriended by Alexey Brodovitch, Art Director at Harper's Bazaar. A successful free-lancer (1947–51), he did fashion and advertising photography for Harper's and The New York Times among others, traveling on assignment to South America and Europe. In 1953 he collected and selected work for Steichen's exhibition, Post-War European Photographers, at the Museum of Modern Art. The first European to receive a Guggenheim in 1955, he spent the next two years traveling across America to capture images of daily life with his 35mm camera, publishing The Americans in 1959. In 1958 he collaborated with the painter Alfred Leslie and author Jack Kerouac to film the free-swinging Pull My Daisy. One of the founders of the New American Cinema Group, he spent most of his time making films until 1966, when he virtually gave up photography. In 1969 he moved to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.