Visual art / Film & TV
Robert Frank
1924–2019 · photographer, documentary filmmaker
Swiss-American photographer whose landmark book The Americans includes pictures made in Detroit and Dearborn on his 1955 road trip.
- Born
Zurich, Switzerland- Died
Inverness, Nova Scotia, Canada
aged 94- Detroit years
- 1955
- Field
- Visual art, Film & TV
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Robert Frank was born in Zurich in 1924 and emigrated to the United States in 1947. With a Guggenheim Fellowship he set out in 1955 on a series of road trips across the country that produced about 28,000 exposures, and Detroit and the neighboring Ford town of Dearborn were among his early stops. In the Motor City he photographed the car industry that had made the American dream portable, including the assembly lines of Ford's giant Rouge plant, as well as ordinary people at leisure. Eighty-three of the road-trip pictures became The Americans, published in Paris in 1958 and in New York in 1959; its cool, unsentimental view of postwar America shocked many critics and changed documentary photography. Frank then turned to film, directing Pull My Daisy (1959) with the Beat writers and later the Rolling Stones documentary Cocksucker Blues.
Highlights
- The Americans (1958–1959), often called the most influential photobook of the 20th century
- Photographed in Detroit and Dearborn in 1955 on a Guggenheim Fellowship
- Co-directed the Beat film Pull My Daisy (1959)
- Later made experimental films and videos
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Related place · 1955
Ford River Rouge Complex
Frank photographed Ford assembly lines here in 1955; the plant still builds vehicles and can be toured through The Henry Ford.