Frank, Robert

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.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.