A Portrait of Robert Frank (2005)

 Leaving Home, Coming Home : A Portrait of Robert Frank (2005)
Made in 2005 this intimate documentary looks at the life and work of one of the world's most influential photographers, Robert Frank.

Born in Zürich, Switzerland in 1924, Frank trained as a commercial photographer with several photographers and a graphic designer in his home town before he created his first hand made book titled, 40 Fotos, in 1946. One year later he traveled to the United States, settling in New York City, where he took up a position as a studio/fashion photographer for Harper's Bazaar magazine, whose art director was impressed with Frank's, 40 Fotos.
However, after discovering that fashion photography was not for him, he left Harper's Bazaar soon after his arrival and embarked on trips around South America, Europe and the U.S.A until the mid-fifties. In 1948 he created his second photo book, Peru.

In 1950 Frank returned to New York and met master photographer Edward Steichen. This was a watershed year for Frank, he took part in the group show 51 American Photographers at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.



Freelancing as a photojournalist for Vogue and Fortune Magazine, he embarked for Europe once again in 1951. He traveled to London where he photographed bankers in the square mile of London and in early 1953 he traveled to Caerau, Wales, to work on a photo-essay about the miner Ben James and his family, documenting their lives in the post war Welsh mining village.

In 1955 Frank began a series of road trips across the Untied States after securing a grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fund with the help of his friend and artistic mentor the photographer, Walker Evans. During the road trips which lasted nearly two years Frank shot 28,000 photos, of which 85 made it into his ground breaking photo book, Les Américaines. 

The book was first published in Paris in 1958 and then published as The Americans in the U.S in 1959. The book stirred controversy and harsh criticism. Frank's dark yet poetic observations of the 'American Dream' were derided in the photographic press of the day. Never-the-less, The Americans became a seminal work in American photography and art history.