Family--Wellfleet 3
Summer 1962
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View on museum website →Medium
contact sheet
Dimensions
overall: 25.2 x 20.1 cm (9 15/16 x 7 15/16 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Robert Frank Collection, Gift of Robert Frank
Accession Number
1990.28.3304
Art Historical Context
**Family—Wellfleet 3** by Robert Frank captures an intimate moment from the summer of 1962 in Wellfleet, a coastal town on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Swiss-born photographer Robert Frank, renowned for his groundbreaking 1958 book *The Americans*, revolutionized documentary photography with his raw, unvarnished portraits of mid-20th-century American life. This image, part of a personal "Family" series, reflects Frank's shift toward more private subjects after his iconic road-trip odyssey across the U.S., offering glimpses into his own life amid the era's social upheavals. Printed as a contact sh...
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...