Robert Frank

Swiss-born Robert Frank has a show at the Met and a film at Film Forum. He is 84 and lives in Manhattan. And no one has had a greater influence on photography in the last half-century. Though he took many photos and made many films, his reputation rests almost entirely on a single book published in 1958. The book (a collection of 83 black-and-white images of American life and now on view in a show at the Met) is an intimate visual chronicle of common people in ordinary situations drawn from several trips he made through his adopted country in the mid-1950s. Frank's favorite photo in the book is this one... Canal Street - New Orleans, 1955 He said of it, "It's rare that you have that movement and the variety of people on the street." Philippe Séclier’s documentary showing at Film Forum is called: “An American Journey: Revisiting Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans’” and retraces Frank's steps using a digital camera rather than a Leica.