National Gallery of Art

As an apprentice to the Swiss advertising photographer Michael Wolgensinger from 1942 to 1944, Frank developed the working method of grouping contact prints thematically and arranging them on boards. During these earliest years of his career he also incorporated the influences of photographers Paul Senn, Jakob Tuggener, and Gotthard Shuh.

Beginning in 1947, Frank worked commercially for Alexey Brodovitch at Harper's Bazaar. During his early years in New York, Frank's own photography responded to the work of André Kertész, Sid Grossman, Louis Faurer, Bill Brandt, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. After photographing extensively in Peru in 1948, Frank made a trip back to Europe in 1949 and another in 1951. In December of that year Frank photographed bankers on the streets of London.

The following year Frank photographed the streets of Paris. Both the London and the Paris series focus on the elements unique to each city–bankers in top hats in London, flowers and street vendors in Paris

Before leaving Europe, Frank undertook a more intimate exploration of the life of miners in Caerau, Wales, on the advice of Edward Steichen. There, he lived with miner Ben James and his family for several days, photographing James as he worked, ate, even washed in a small basin in his home.

In 1955 Frank embarked on his most extensive photographic exploration of a particular time and place. From late June 1955 to early June 1956 he traveled across the United States by car, photographing roads, drugstores, jukeboxes, cars, and the people who inhabit them. He published 83 photographs from this journey in 1958/1959 as The Americans.

After completing the stunning Americans series, Frank turned his attention mainly to filmmaking. However, he continued to make photographs intermittently throughout the years. In 1958 he photographed individuals in New York City through the window of a bus.

At times Frank combined his photographic and filmmaking practices, as in this work comprising 15 film stills from Pull My Daisy mounted on paper. The technique calls to mind his arrangements of contact prints during his early years in Switzerland.

In 1975 Frank began making photographic collages using multiple negatives, often Polaroids, onto which he scratched text. In photographs of his homes in New York and Mabou, Nova Scotia, he often included names of and inscriptions to friends and family.

In recent years Frank has continued to make powerful photographs of an intensely personal and increasingly symbolic nature. More spare and intimate than his previous work, these pictures include bits of landscape, domestic objects, and occasional references to his past.