Photographer Robert Frank, one of the most pivotal figures in history, has passed away at the age of 94. Frank’s 1958 book The Americans redefined what a photograph could mean and is arguably the most influential photo book of all time. Your favorite photographer’s favorite photographer. Frank has inspired generations and continued to photograph, make films and publish books until his death.
nation that is premised on an idea—not on an alleged shared bloodline or eons of history on common acreage—is prone to periodically question exactly who and what it is. The matter that binds Americans, as much as any doctrine or document, is the pursuit of a definition of who Americans are. There are facile adjectives applied to us—optimistic, volatile, swaggering—but they more often seem to apply to pretensions that we wear before the world. Who we are in our unguarded moments, and even what portion of people are included in the word we, is another matter entirely. This is part of the reason that Robert Frank’s photographic essay “The Americans,” published in France in 1958 and released in the U.S. a year later, is both an indelible reflection of American culture and one of the works that helped define it. To produce it, Frank, who died this week, at the age of ninety-four, spent two years scouring the country in a used car, courtesy of a Guggenheim grant, a contrail of dust his most constant companion.
The world has lost another photography great this week. Fred Herzog, an early pioneer of color and street photography, died in Vancouver on Monday at age 88. Herzog started photographing in and around Vancouver in 1953, making images awash with vibrant color – complex, mysterious, exuberant, and full of life, much like the city he photographed. As David Campany noted in his introduction to the book Modern Color, Herzog “observed the grain of that city as it lived, worked, played, and changed . . . . Few other bodies of photography in the history of the medium have come close to the richness of Herzogs extended city portrait.”
Robert Frank’s The Americans greatly influenced the course of 20th and 21st-century photography. His contemporaries, and those who followed, reflect on the enduring significance of his work
Robert Frank’s The Americans greatly influenced the course of 20th and 21st-century photography. His contemporaries, and those who followed, reflect on the enduring significance of his work
now Charlie Cole, the American photojournalist behind one of the four iconic Tank Man photos taken during the infamous 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing, has also passed away. Cole was 64 years old
Mr. Frank, best known for his groundbreaking book, “The Americans,” had a visually raw and personally expressive style that made him one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century.
Collaborator of Jean-Philippe Charbonnier, reporter for Réalités magazine, Niepce 1962 award, distributed by the Dalmas photo agency then Rapho and today by Gamma-Rapho agency, Jean-Louis Swiners left us between two parties scoffing at life he loved so much.
Alan Hagman, a veteran Los Angeles Times photographer who captured defining Southern California images with his camera and as an editor relied on a skilled eye to tell stories from Seattle to Singapore with powerful and arresting pictures, has died at his home in Long Beach.
In taking portraits of the famous — Margaret Thatcher, Sean Connery and Rudolf Nureyev among them — she made them relax. In war zones she was unflinching.
In taking portraits of the famous — Margaret Thatcher, Sean Connery and Rudolf Nureyev among them — she made them relax. In war zones she was unflinching.
Jill Freedman was in a league of her own. Some people knew her work but many more should have. She was elusive and forthright and not beholden to anyo…
Jill Freedman was in a league of her own. Some people knew her work but many more should have. She was elusive and forthright and not beholden to anyone. She didn’t really pursue commercial jobs to float her documentary work like many of her contemporaries and she did not kiss ass.
Danziger Gallery presents an exhibition devoted to Robert Frank American photographs, his best known and arguably most important work. The exhibition will be comprised of 40 photographs – 15 from Frank’s seminal book “The Americans” (now celebrating the 60th anniversary of its American publication) and 25 unpublished works from Frank’s travels at the time.
Robert Frank died today. As Sean O’Hagan wrote for The Guardian “it is impossible to imagine photography’s recent past and overwhelmingly confusing present without (Robert Frank’s) lingeringly pervasive presence. Frank was 31 in 1955 when he secured the Guggenheim Grant… He shot around 28,000 pictures. When Les Americains was published by Robert Delpire in France in 1958, it consisted of just 83 black and white images, but it changed the nature of photography, what it could say and how it could say it… it remains perhaps the most influential photography book of the 20th century… (Robert Frank) caught what Diane Arbus called the ‘hollowness’ at the heart of many American lives, the chasm between the American dream and the everyday reality.” One of the photographers I know in Cape Breton, Chad Tobin, @tobinchad, has been photographing Robert Frank at his summer home in Mabou, Nova Scotia for ten years now. He and Robert Frank had a special connection.
French photojournalist Camille Lepage was just 26 when she was killed covering the armed conflict in the Central African Republic, a country riven by violence between largely Muslim rebel groups an…
It was only after Lepage’s death that her story caught the attention of French filmmaker Boris Lojkine, whose sophomore narrative feature, “Camille,” will have its world premiere on the Piazza Grande during the Locarno Film Festival. Starring Nina Meurisse and based on extensive research with Lepage’s family, friends and colleagues, the film is both a moving coming-of-age story about a young photographer finding her artistic voice and a thoughtful exploration of the ethical challenges faced by war photographers in foreign lands.
Award-winning German photographer Michael Wolf, best known for his photos showing the quirks and density of megacities, has died. He was 64. The New York
Award-winning German photographer Michael Wolf, best known for his photos showing the quirks and density of megacities, has died. He was 64. The New York
Award-winning German photographer Michael Wolf, best known for his photos showing the quirks and density of megacities, has died. He was 64. The New York
