Robert Frank
What Am I Looking At / Today Is My Daughter´s Birthday, Tokyo-Hokkaido, April 1994
What Am I Looking At / Today Is My Daughter´s Birthday, Tokyo-Hokkaido, April 1994, 1994
Diptych, 2 Gelatin-silver prints, each 50.5 x 40.4 cm,
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur, permanent loan Volkart Stiftung
2001-002-053
© Robert Frank
1924 (Zurich, CH) – 2019 (Inverness, CA)
Robert Frank’s view of late 1950s post-war American society – both radically subjective and laced with an atmosphere of melancholy – called into question the conventions of documentary narrative photography. After moving to New York, the Swiss-born photographer began taking pictures for magazines like Harper’s Bazaar. Between 1955 and 1957, with the help of a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation, he worked on a long-term study of the US, which he published as a photobook titled The Americans. Its trenchant observations of everyday life take the viewer beneath the surface of the American Dream, painting a socially critical portrait of a society shot through with racism and social inequality. First published in France in 1958, and then in the US the following year with a foreword by Jack Kerouac, the book is thought to have broken new ground for subsequent generations of photographers. In addition to his photographic work, Frank made a number of independent films, including his 1959 debut Pull My Daisy, which featured Beat Generation authors, and Cocksucker Blues, a documentary he shot on the Rolling Stones’ 1972 tour.