1963
c. 2012
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
internal dye diffusion transfer print (Polaroid SX-70)
Dimensions
image/sheet: 7.9 × 7.7 cm (3 1/8 × 3 1/16 in.) mount: 10.8 × 8.9 cm (4 1/4 × 3 1/2 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Jane P. Watkins
Accession Number
2015.186.1.6
Art Historical Context
Robert Frank's "1963," created around 2012, offers an intimate glimpse into the photographer's later experimentation with instant film. The small internal dye diffusion transfer print, made with a Polaroid SX-70 camera, measures roughly 3 by 3 inches and features the distinctive color saturation and soft edges that define this medium. Frank, best known for his influential 1950s book *The Americans*, here returns to a format that emphasizes spontaneity and immediacy over traditional darkroom control. The title likely references a formative year in Frank's career, when he was traveling and docu...
About the Artist
Robert Frank
Robert Frank (1924-2019) was a Swiss-American photographer and documentary filmmaker whose revolutionary approach to documentary photography fundamentally transformed the medium and influenced generations of artists. Born in Zurich, Switzerland, on November 9, 1924, to a middle-class Jewish family, Frank began his photographic apprenticeship in 1941, working with commercial photographers before im...