Robert Frank’s Legacy in Pictures
The iconic documentary photographer has died at the age of 94.
No superlative does justice to Robert Frank. The photographer, born to a Jewish family in Switzerland in 1924, came to the U.S. as a restless 23-year-old and went on to produce the most seminal photography book of the genre. His 1955 cross-country road trip resulted in “The Americans,” with 83 pictures, first published by Robert Delpire in Paris in 1958. It was reprinted a year later by Barney Rosset’s Grove Press in New York, with an introduction by Jack Kerouac.
“That crazy feeling in America when the sun is hot on the streets and music comes out of the jukebox or from a nearby funeral, that’s what Robert Frank has captured in the tremendous photographs,” Kerouac wrote. “With the agility, mystery, genius, sadness, and strange secrecy of a shadow,” he continued, Frank “photographed scenes that have never been seen before on film.”