Robert Frank. Be Happy

To mark the occasion, this presentation brings together a selection of his photographs from the Photography Collection, along with letters and documents as well Frank’s very first video film Home Improvements (1985).
Born in Zurich, Switzerland, shortly after the end of the Second World War Robert Frank left Europe behind him in order to start a new life in the United States. He first came to world fame with his photobook The Americans, published first in France in 1958 and one year later in the United States. With a scholarship from the renowned Guggenheim Foundation, Frank travelled America from coast to coast and in his images captured the country and its people with all the innate contradictions he encountered. Today, the volume is considered one of the 20th century’s most important and influential photobooks. Only a short while later, Frank turned his back on the photographic image in favour of film. It was not until the early 1970s that he returned to working with individual images. In the process, he explored new techniques and started first and foremost experi-
menting with Polaroids as well as montages, collages, and interwoven texts and images.

In the course of Robert Frank’s life, Museum Folkwang hosted four solo exhibitions of his artistic oeuvre: New York to Nova Scotia (1987), HOLD STILL – keep going (2000), Paris (2008) und Books and Films, 1947–2014 (2015).

FURTHER INFORMATION