Fotomuseum Winterthur : Robert Frank - Storylines

Robert Frank (born in 1924 in Zurich) is regarded as one of most influential photographers of the 20th century and was honoured with the 1996 Hasselblad Award. To mark his 80th birthday the Tate Modern put together an exhibition in cooperation with the Winterthur Photo Museum and the Swiss Foundation of Photography, which will be shown from 3rd September until 20th November 2005 in Winterthur/Switzerland. Over 250 photographs, videos and artist books, which were selected together with the artist for this exhibition, will be shown. Robert Frank – Storylines will carve out the essence of this work, which covers around 60 years, and present the narrative aspect of his photographic experience. After going to school in Zurich and training as a photographer at different Swiss photo ateliers he emigrated to New York in 1947 . He took his first portfolio with him, which impressed the art director of Harper’s Bazaar so much that he offered him a job as a studio photographer. Then until the mid-50’sRobert Frank travelled around South America, Europe and the USA, and developed on the way his own unique style, a mixture of real portrayal, the narrative potential of photographic sequences and the visual poetry of everyday life. In 1951 he portrayed the city of London during the tension between poverty and wealth after the Second World War. The exhibition will also include a series of important pictures from the book Les Américains (1958)/The Americans (1959), from his most famous and influential picture series. More unpublished photography from his America journeys, pictures from the *River Rouge* Ford car factory near Detroit will be shown alongside pictures from the Democratic National Convent in Chicago (1956), which were too hard and strong for client Esquire to publish in the same year. A small photo series, shot from the windows of New York buses and quite simply entitled *From the Bus* (1958), displays a decisive step in his development. After this photography Robert Frank explained his desire to give up photography for film. His first film was *Pull My Daisy* (1959). In the 70’s Frank then returned to photography, to complex picture constructions with picture series, sequences, with Polaroids and handwritten texts, with stills from films and videos. Robert Frank’s newest pictures investigate the world from inside towards the outside : seeing, feeling, thinking – and also loss, sorrow and growing old. The exhibition, which has been curated in its original form by Vicente Todolí, Director of the Tate Modern, and Philip Brookman, curator at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC, is extended by earlier photos, which were taken in Switzerland. Parallel to the exhibition the Robert Frank: Storylines book is available . And at the same time an Essay book on Robert Frank is also on offer, published by the Winterthur Photo Museum and the Swiss Art Foundation, published by Steidl. Plus, the XENIX cinema in Zurich is showing films by Robert Frank from 1st September – 2nd October 2005.