Robert Frank, Flamingo

Robert Frank

Flamingo

The Hasselblad Award 1996
First edition, Hasselblad Foundation, 1997

This book contains previously unpublished collages and sequential works made since 1994 as well as some of his earlier photographs.The most influential of the post-war street photographers, Robert Frank does not just capture light on film, but he renders his thoughts and imagination through his stream of consciousness imagery. Flamingo, published on the occasion of Frank's winning the Hasselblad Award, reviews his oeuvre through some 35 carefully selected duotone photographs and collages, along with an insightful essay by Mikael van Reis. Frank chose the works for the catalog himself, including pictures taken throughout his career, with an emphasis on his later work. In these shots, he combines multiple images in a single composition. As his photos become more intimate, physically drawing the viewer in with short depth-of-field and soft focus, they also become more distanced through the use of multiple frames. Frank further personalizes his photographs by introducing words etched on negatives or scrawled on prints with markers. While his starting point was the objective realism of the 1930s, and his work is now more constructed than journalistic, Robert Frank's images continue to have a decisive impact on a new generation of photographers, painters, film makers, critics, and writers.