Chronology
1924
Robert Frank - born, November 9, 1925, Zurich, Switzerland.
1940
Studies French at Institut Jomini in Payerne, Switzerland, until January 1941.
1941-44
Brief apprenticeship and employments as a photographer’s assistant in Switzerland (including with Hermann Segesser and Michael Wolgensinger).
1945
Military service in the Swiss Army.
1946
At the end of his last apprenticeship he makes his first book 40 Fotos as a portfolio.
40 Fotos, 1946
1947
Leaves Switzerland for New York City looking for work. Meets Alexey Brodovitch who hires him to begin working at Harper’s Bazaar.
1948
Meets Mary Lockspeiser shortly before leaving for South America in June to travel through Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil passing through Panama City and Santiago en route.
Returns to New York in October.
Makes his second book of photographs which he titles Peru.
Road to La Paz, 1948
1949
Meets the Paris-based Chinese painter San-Yu with whom he agrees to swap apartments. Travels to France, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain with Zurich and Paris as a base.
Robert Frank and San-Yu, c. 1961
1950
Marries Mary Lockspeiser in June.
1951
Son Pablo is born February 7th.
In November he joins Mary and Pablo in Paris who had left New York earlier to meet Robert’s parents in Switzerland.
Wins a prize in the Life magazine Young Photographers Contest. Spends five days photographing in London.
1952
Meets the publisher Robert Delpire.
Robert, Mary and Pablo spend April through July in Valencia, Spain.
In August, they move to Zurich where Robert creates his book Black, White and Things.
In November, they travel to Great Britain, staying mostly in London but also in Wales.
Mary, Robert and Pablo, Wales, 1952
1953
Spends over a week in March photographing the miner Ben James in Caerau, Wales.
Arrive back in New York City on March 21, first living at Mary’s mother’s apartment on East 9th Street.
The Museum of Modern Art curator Edward Steichen includes 22 of Robert’s photographs in his ‘Post War European Photography’ exhibition, the most significant presentation of his work to date.
1954
Daughter Andrea is born April 21st.
The photographer and Fortune magazine editor Walker Evans helps Robert to draft his application for the Guggenheim Fellowship.
1955
Awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in May for his project to photograph America.
Parade- Hoboken, New Jersey, 1955
Makes his first trip alone by car to photograph in Detroit in July and another trip south that summer from New York as far as Savannah, Georgia.
Drives alone toward the southeast beginning in October.
Mary, Pablo, and Andrea join Robert in Texas in December to continue the road trip west arriving in Los Angeles before the end of the year.
U. S. En Route, Texas, 1955
1956
The family remains in Los Angeles until traveling north to San Francisco in early Spring. Robert then continues alone north through Nevada, Utah and Montana and then east toward home in New York City.
Awarded a second Guggenheim Fellowship to continue his project.
1957
Travels to Paris in June with a maquette of photographs from the Guggenheim project to work with Robert Delpire to prepare it for publication.
The first publication of his Guggenheim photographs appear in U.S. Camera Annual, Evergreen Review, and Camera.
Meets Jack Kerouac in the fall.
1958
Begins working for the New York Times advertising department.
In the summer he photographs the streets of New York from city buses.
July 4-5 he photographs at Coney Island.
Begins experimenting with cinema.
In November, Delpire publishes 83 photographs from his Guggenheim project as Les Américains with an assortment of texts selected by the French writer Alain Bosquet.
1959
Co-directs the film Pull My Daisy with Alfred Leslie.
Robert Frank and Jack Kerouac on the set of Pull My Daisy, 1959 by John Cohen
Makes preparations for the revised edition of his book of Guggenheim photographs as the book The Americans with an introduction by Jack Kerouac to be published by Grove Press in English with a 1959 publication date. However, the book is not actually issued until January 1960.
1960
The Americans is published January 15th.
The May issue of Popular Photography includes an unprecedented feature of separate reviews by seven of the magazine’s editors harshly criticizing The Americans.
1961
April to June his first solo exhibition “Robert Frank, Photographer” is held at the Art Institute of Chicago, curated by Hugh Edwards.
Spends the summer based in Switzerland, travels to film festivals in Italy. Completes his second film, The Sin of Jesus.
1962
January to April his photographs are included in the two-person exhibition, “Photographs by Harry Callahan and Robert Frank” at the Museum of Modern Art, curated by Edward Steichen.
1963
Directs the film OK, End Here which is shown in September at both the Bergamo Film Festival and the New York Film Festival.
Becomes a citizen of the United States on October 18th.
1964
Begins as cameraman for the film by Conrad Rooks titled Chappaqua. Shooting continues through 1966.
1965
Begins shooting his own film Me and My Brother.
Still from Me and My Brother, 1969
1967
Chappaqua is released.
1968
The Americans is re-issued in a slightly augmented new edition by Aperture and with a paperback version under the imprint of the Museum of Modern Art.
1969
Separates from Mary and later divorces.
Writes five monthly columns for London’s Creative Camera magazine. Produces and directs his first autobiographical film, Conversations in Vermont, and the documentary Liferaft Earth.
Moves to 184 Bowery in NYC with artist June Leaf.
Self-portrait in 184 Bowery studio, New York, 1971
© the Estate of June Leaf
Receives funding from the American Film Institute to produce About Me: A Musical.
Summer, buys land and a house in Mabou, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada with June Leaf.
Mabou
1971
Completes maquette for the book The Lines of My Hand. Kazuhiko Motomura, the publisher, visits New York and collects the maquette in person.
1972
The Lines of My Hand is published in its original deluxe version by Yugensha and in paperback by Ralph Gibson’s Lustrum Press.
Leaf’s charcoal illustration for The Lines of My Hand, 1972
1973
Moves out of 184 Bowery Street to live year round in Mabou.
1974
Daughter Andrea dies in a plane crash in Guatemala.
Marries June Leaf in Reno, Nevada on the way to California where he teaches filmmaking for two months at the University of California at Davis.
Untitled, 1975 by Roberta Neiman
Begins photographing with a disposable Lure brand camera.
Father Henry dies in Zurich.
Begins to work with collages of black-and-white photographs made with Polaroid Type 665 Positive/Negative film combined with texts.
Andrea, Mabou, c. 1976-78
Rents an apartment at 7 Bleecker Street and later purchases the property. Begins spending part of each year in Mabou and the other part of the year in New York at Bleecker Street.
First retrospective exhibition, “Robert Frank: An Exhibition of Photography and Films, 1945-1977,” curated by Philip Brookman at the Mary Porter Session Art Gallery, University of California, Santa Cruz.
1983
Begins working on his first video Home Improvements, completed in 1985.
Still from Home Improvements, 1985
1984
Photographs at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco.
1986
“Robert Frank: New York to Nova Scotia” opens at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, curated by Anne W. Tucker.
1990
The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. establishes the Robert Frank Collection. Frank donates negatives, contact sheets, work and exhibition prints.
1991
Travels to Beirut to photograph the devastated city for a book and exhibition.
1994
Retrospective exhibition, “Robert Frank: Moving Out”, opens at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C, curated by Sarah Greenough and Philip Brookman.
Son Pablo dies in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
1995
Andrea Frank Foundation is established in New York. The name was changed in 2024 to the June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation.
2000
Retrospective exhibition, “Robert Frank: Hold Still - Keep Going” opens at the Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany, curated by Ute Eskildsen.
2004
Exhibition, “Robert Frank: Storylines” opens at Tate Modern, London, curated by Vicent Todoli.
2009
Exhibition, “Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans” opens at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., curated by Sarah Greenough.
2014
The exhibition “Robert Frank: Books and Films, 1947-2014”, conceived by the printer and publisher Gerhard Steidl and printed on newsprint is presented for the first time at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax.
2019
Dies, September 9, Inverness, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.
2024
Exhibition, “Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue” opens at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Curated by Lucy Gallun and Kaitlin Booher.
Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue poster
Mabou Winter Footage, 1977
1941-44
1970-72
1947-48
1950-51
1958-59
1969-70
1965-66
1952-53
1948-49
1978
1975
1970
1976