Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue

This catalogue accompanying an exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art celebrates the centenary of the birth of Robert Frank (1924–2019). An essential artist in the history of American photography and particularly of street photography, Frank is best known for gritty black-and-white pictures taken in the 1950s during solo travels across the States, which seemed to describe the loneliness of the open road and throughout American life. This title explores the work that Frank made during the rest of his lengthy career, spanning some six decades, starting in 1958 with his decision to depart from his earlier style to pursue a practice intimately autobiographical, emphasizing family and community, and to make films, which he prized for their collaborative character. From his early work, one might think that Frank was isolated and itinerant, observing but uninvolved in community. This title reveals the opposite, describing his participation in vibrant social networks, including the downtown New York avant-garde arts community of the 1950s and, later, in Nova Scotia, among a gathering of artists (his wife June Leaf, Philip Glass, Joan Jonas, and Richard Serra, among others), and his lively correspondence with artists and art world figures.