The Collection
The Robert Frank Collection at the National Gallery of Art is the largest repository of materials related to renowned photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank. The collection, spanning Frank's career from 1937 to 2005, includes vintage and later prints, contact sheets, work prints, negatives, volumes (books of photographs produced by Frank), one drawing, technical material, and various papers, books and recordings. Click on links to the right for a description of each category. Regarding titles, please note that many are descriptive only, derived either from information given by Robert Frank to the National Gallery, or from notes Frank wrote on the sleeves that held his negatives. Regarding dates, please note that at times corresponding prints and contact sheets have been assigned different dates. Like titles, dates have in most cases been provided by Frank and not necessarily confirmed through historical research.
For a comparison of the number of prints, contact sheets and work prints in the collection, see Robert Frank Photographs, Contact Sheets, and Work Prints in the Collection. The spreadsheet lists subjects photographed by Frank, in chronological order, then provides the number of pictures of that subject in each format in the collection and their accession numbers.
For a comparison of the number of prints, and contact sheets produced during Frank's Guggenheim trip, broken down by state, including those published in The Americans, see Robert Frank Photographs, Contact Sheets, and Work Prints from the Guggenheim Trip, Including those Published in The Americans. This list includes only those objects indicated by Frank to have been products of the Guggenheim trip. For other objects related to the trip but not explicitly linked to the trip by Frank, see categories on the larger spreadsheet such as "Jay, NY," "Toy Ball," "Cowboys," "Congressional," "Juke boxes," "Newburgh, NY," and "Convention."
For a comparison of the number of prints and contact sheets included in the Black White and Things volume, see Robert Frank Photographs and Contact Sheets Published in Black White and Things. This spreadsheet includes each page of the volume owned by the National Gallery, as well as 21 contact sheets that include pictures from the series. These are not necessarily all of the contact sheets in the collection that include pictures from the series, only the ones explicitly labeled as such by Frank.
To search the collection by title, keyword, date, provenance, or accession number, please visit the National Gallery of Art collection search page.