Robert Frank was born November 9, 1924. He is an important figure in American photography and film. (Those were his occupations) His most notable work was his book, titled, "The Americans", published in Paris, 1958, which expresses his fresh and nuanced outsider's view of american society. Frank was born in Zurich, Switzerland, and came to New York later in 1947. Frank honed his skills working as a commmercial photographer. He later quit his job to start taking pictures through out the world. His theory was that, "A photographer needs to practice by getting out and taking pictures everyday." At the beginning Robert did not get much support from the art world, he recalls. His family consisted of: .
- A former spouse named Mary Frank .
- A son called Pablo Frank .
- A daughter called Andrea Frank .
- His father was Hermann Frank .
- His mother Rosa Frank .
- A brother named Manfred Frank .
- And his spouse June leaf .
He saw America as an often bleak and lonely place. This perspective later became the evident in his photography. In 1955 he traveled across the us all strata of its society on road trips with his family. During his trip Frank shot 676 rolls of film yielding about 28,000 pictures. He edited them and came up with 1,000 work prints, at the end he only chose 83 images. Some of the places he visited were: New Orleans, Georgia, Washington, Lousiana, New York, Chicago, Michigan, Arizona, Arkansas, Houston, Nevada, Detroit, Hollywood, North Carolina, Los Angeles, etc. Frank photography changed the documentary tradition. it changed the aesthetic of photography, the rules of photography and emphasized feelings, focused less on the "single image" This concepts made the americans so influential. .
Frank realized that imitating their aesthetic or using the focal lengths that they used wouldn't create intresting or unique art. He used unusual focus, low lighting, cropping that deviated from accepted photographic techniques.
