parade
astrocruzan
In Homage To...
Robert Frank
Robert Frank was born in Zurich in 1902, but left Switzerland as soon as he could. In 1947 he went to New York and Alexey Brodovitch gave him a fashion job for Harper's Bazaar.
He continued to travel and photographed in South America and in England among other places. In 1955 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and spent a year travelling across America and photographing. The pictures from this he made into a book but he could not find a publisher in the USA. He took it to Robert Delpiré in France, who had to threaten to resign to get it published as 'Les Americains'.
Following this it was published a year later in America with an introduction by Jack Kerouac. The Americans is now recognised as one of the classic photography books of the century. It built on the achievement of Walker Evans (one of Frank's supporters for his Guggenheim application) in American Photographs, and was in some respects modelled on this other great work.
Links
FEATURE: - Robert Frank - The Early Years
First of a two part feature on Frank which continues with Robert Frank - The Americans and after. See also the feature Swiss Photography which looks at photography at the time Frank was growing up and becoming a photographer in Switzerland.
FEATURE: - Walker Evans, (1903-75)
There are many similarities between The Americans and Walker Evans' American Photographs, not least in the use of motifs and sequencing. The car is central to both of them.
Others By This Photographer
All photographs shown on Utata are stored on flickr. This photo and text © astrocruzan.
The previous 4 images in the loop
The next 4 images in the loop
