Henry Frank: Father Photographer 1890-1976

by Robert Frank (Editor), François-Marie Banier (Editor), Henry Frank (Photographer)

Robert Frank's father, Henry, was both the proprietor of a bicycle shop in Zurich, and a keen amateur photographer. Album makes public for the first time a selection of Henry Frank's photographs, including landscapes, family portraits, still-lifes and cityscapes. When Robert Frank emigrated to the United States in 1947, a wooden box containing his father's stereophotographs was one of the few objects he brought with him. In 2008, that box and the fragile photographic glass plates within it were hand-escorted to Steidl in Göttingen, Germany, where they were scanned in tri-tone in preparation for this book. Designed by Robert Frank, Album reveals Henry Frank to be a talented photographer, a keen traveler and an enthusiast of modern means of transport. This intimately-designed photo album is a revelation of the unknown photographer Henry Frank, and a historical photographic document of the early twentieth century, as well as a new chapter in Robert Frank's ongoing bookmaking.

88 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Robert Frank (November 9, 1924 – September 9, 2019) was a Swiss American photographer and documentary filmmaker. His most notable work, the 1958 book titled The Americans, earned Frank comparisons to a modern-day de Tocqueville for his fresh and nuanced outsider's view of American society. Critic Sean O'Hagan, writing in The Guardian in 2014, said The Americans "changed the nature of photography, what it could say and how it could say it. [ ... ] it remains perhaps the most influential photography book of the 20th century." Frank later expanded into film and video and experimented with manipulating photographs and photomontage.

Reviews

[Peter Spencer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful tribute to photographer Robert Frank's father. Gorgeously printed by Steidl. Photos reminded me of those found in W.G. Sebald books.