National Gallery of Art

Early Years

Robert Frank was born in Switzerland on November 9, 1924. He began his photography training in 1941 as an apprentice to graphic designer Hermann Segesser. The following year Frank served as an apprentice to, then an employee of, advertising photographer Michael Wolgensinger. In 1944 he became an assistant to Victor Bouverat in Geneva.

Before immigrating to New York in 1947, Frank traveled and photographed in Milan, Paris, and Strasbourg. He also made his first book, a spiral-bound volume titled 40 Fotos. On his arrival in New York, Frank was hired by Alexey Brodovitch as an assistant photographer at Harper's Bazaar. Within months Frank had resigned, although he continued to work for Harper's as a freelance photographer. That same year Frank began publishing both commercial and independent work in a variety of magazines and journals.

Frank made several trips during his first few years living in the United States. In 1948 he traveled to Central and South America (spending time mainly in Peru but also visiting Panama, Cuba, Brazil, and Bolivia). His sojourn in Peru resulted in the creation of two spiral-bound books, each containing the same 39 photographs but sequenced differently. In 1949, shortly after meeting artist Mary Lockspeiser, Frank traveled to Europe, photographing in Switzerland, France, Spain, and Italy. While in Paris, Frank assembled a unique book of 74 photographs of Paris for Lockspeiser. They married the following year.

The Americans

In October 1954, with the guidance of Walker Evans, Frank applied for a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, proposing to drive across the United States photographing American life. He was awarded the fellowship and in the summer of 1955 began his journey with a trip to Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan. He then traveled with Mary down the East Coast, photographing in North and South Carolina and Georgia. That fall he drove to Florida, and from there he crossed the country, through Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada, arriving in California around Christmas. While in California, Frank applied for a renewal of the Guggenheim fellowship. When it was granted in April 1956, Frank drove a northern route back to New York, passing through Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Back in New York by June 1956, Frank developed film, made and reviewed contact sheets of all 767 rolls of film shot for the project, made approximately 1,000 work prints, and began to sequence the photographs that would become his seminal book, The Americans. He continued to refine his selections through June 1957, and French publisher Robert Delpire released Les Américains in Paris in October 1958. The following year Grove Press published The Americans in New York with an introduction by Jack Kerouac (the book was released in January 1960). Since its original publication, this masterwork has appeared in numerous editions and has been translated into several languages.

Later Years

With the mammoth project of The Americans behind him, Frank turned quickly to filmmaking. He took his first film footage in the summer of 1958, filming Mary and several friends in Provincetown, MA. He went on to make such films as The Sin of Jesus (1960), Pull My Daisy (1961), Me and My Brother (begun 1965, opened 1969), Home Improvements (made 1983, first shown 1985), and his only feature-length film, Candy Mountain (begun 1986, released 1988). Frank continued to travel on assignment to places such as Italy and Nairobi (1961) as well as Yugoslavia, Romania, and Hungary (1963).

In 1963 Frank became a United States citizen. In the decade following, however, he began to spend more time in Canada. After separating from Mary in 1969, Frank bought a house in Mabou on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, with artist June Leaf in 1970. He and Leaf married in 1975. Frank endured a series of personal tragedies in the 1970s. First, his friend and film collaborator Danny Seymour disappeared while sailing to South America and was presumed dead. Then, in 1974, Frank's daughter Andrea was killed in a plane crash near Tikal, Guatemala. Frank suffered another loss when his son died in 1994.

In 1975 Frank began making photographic collages that included multiple negatives and often words scratched into the negatives or written on the prints, a practice he continued throughout his later career. He has been the recipient of a number of awards and honors, including the Erich Salomon Prize from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie in Berlin (1985); the Friends of Photography Peer Award for a Distinguished Career in Photography (1987); the Erna and Victor Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography (1996); the Persistence of Vision Award from the San Francisco International Film Festival (1998); an honorary PhD from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden (1999); and the International Center of Photography Cornell Capa Infinity Award (2000). Frank's work has been exhibited internationally since 1950 and his book The Americans has become a touchstone of American photography.

Frank and Leaf continue to divide their time between their apartment in Manhattan and their home in Mabou.