Research Paper On Robert Frank

Robert Frank

Alej Villalobos
November 17, 2015
Block #1

“When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice”(Frank). Robert Frank’s photography, was the type of photography that you could look at for hours on end, leaving you wondering if there was further meaning in the photography. Robert Frank, was one of the most famous photographers. He was famous for being an American photographer and a documentary filmmaker, he influenced many other photographers and soon then followed into his footsteps into becoming an American photographer.
Robert Frank, was born in November 9, 1924 (age 91) in Zürich, Switzerland. Frank, had a small family not many. Rosa, being his
mom has a Swiss passport, while his dad, Hermann was born in Germany. He had become a emigrant after losing his German citizenship as a Jew. They had to apply for the Swiss citizenship from Frank and his older brother, Manfred in order for his dad to get it back. Although Frank and his family were safe during World War II in Switzerland the threat of Nazis affected him. He turned to photography, to escape from all his worries in life, and so he would forget about everything while he was out shooting pictures of the Americans. He was taught by a few photographers and graphic designers he learned the basics and then he created his first handmade book of photographs, forty photographs, in 1946. Frank came the United States in 1947, and found a job in New York City as a fashion photographer for a guy named Harper's Bazaar. Soon after that Frank left to travel in South America and Europe. He made another hand made book of photographs that he took in Peru while he visiting there, and then he returned to the United States, in 1950. Where he soon began being an official filmmaker and American photographer, and that's where it all started.
Throughout Frank's life he has written about ten books including his handmade ones of just photos he had taken when he would travel. One of his most famous books was The Americans published in France in, 1958 as for in the United States it was published in, 1959. This novel was about Frank's career being an American photographer and filmmaker. He saw hope for feature in all the people he took photographs of, he saw the roiling racial tension, glamour, and beauty.
Frank, was a perfectionist he did not want to waste a single photograph he took.
He would wait till the time was perfect to take it. Every photograph he took had a meaning behind it in his eyes and also wanted it to have a meaning in others people's eyes. Whether the photograph was a funeral goers lean against a shiny sedan, or lovers kissing on a beach blanket in front of their parked car, young boys perch in the back seat at a drive in movie. A sports car framed by two California palm tree all these precise moments had a meeting behind them. Frank, has gone through a lot so he expressed a lot through his photographs. Frank and his wife divorced in 1969 just as Frank had started to document his family his son Pablo was diagnosed with schizophrenia (“a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation.”) (Frank’s article definition) and his daughter Andrea died in a plane crash in, 1974 at 21 years
old.
In May 2015, Frank returned to his home town Zürich for the first time, since he last left when he was young.
“I know this town, but I certainly feel like a stranger here,’’ he said. He was amazing by how much the city had changed it was perfect too him. Frank had come back to Switzerland to receive the “Roswitha Haftmann Prize for lifetime achievement, Europe’s most lucrative fine-arts award” (Dawidoff).
One of the most influential and wealthy photographers of the mid-20th century. Robert Frank is still inspiring people and many other professional photographers around the world with his extraordinary work. Frank no longer takes photographs because of his old age but he says “all my photographs are always alive like if I just took them” (Frank). Frank believes that he does not have to throw coins into fountains because he has everything he needs in his life, he doesn't believe in wishing wells “ only the poor have to hope”
(Frank).