After completing his seminal photography book The Americans in 1958, Robert Frank put aside the single image and concentrated throughout the 1960s on film-making. He only returned to still photography in the 1970s, using a Polaroid camera with black-and-white positive/negative film. These images were frequently layered with text, which Frank inscribed by hand onto the Polaroid negative. He found that these works allowed him more freedom to "destroy that image, that perfect image." In recent years, Frank has worked almost exclusively with Polaroids, exploring the collage and assemblage possibilities of the instant photograph. This slipcased collection of small, staple-bound books represents a new stage in the practice of a remarkable artist who continually challenges the limits of photography and film, always striving not to repeat himself. It brings together seven sequences of single new images compiled by Frank. As always, the photographs and stories relate Frank's life and milieu-his homes in Mabou and New York, for example, or trips to China and Spain.
Robert Frank was born in Zurich in 1924 to parents of Jewish descent. He immigrated to the United States two years after World War II ended, and since then he has produced work that changed the history of art and photography. Groundbreaking projects include The Americans, Lines of My Hand, Black White and Things, Pull My Daisy and Cocksucker Blues. Frank was the subject of a major retrospective organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in 1994. He was the recipient of the Hasselblad Award in 1996. A major exhibition organized by the National Gallery of Art, Looking In: Robert Frank's "The Americans," will tour nationally in 2009, with stops in Washington, D.C., San Francisco and New York.
Book 1: China, 20 pgs, 20 photos Book 2: Early Europe/Red Lake, 16 pgs, 15 photos Book 3: Flies/Pools, 12 pgs, 6 photos Book 4: Objects, 14 pgs, 7 photos Book 5: Objects/Photos, 20 pgs, 11 photos Book 6: People Story, 22 pgs, 15 photos Book 7: Story Rooms/Windows, 20 pgs, 19 photos.