Halifax Infirmary
1978
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
gelatin silver print with green oil paint and black ink
Dimensions
sheet: 50.5 x 40.6 cm (19 7/8 x 16 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Robert Frank Collection, Anonymous Gift
Accession Number
1994.31.1
Art Historical Context
Robert Frank's *Halifax Infirmary (1978) captures a poignant moment at a Canadian hospital, rendered in a gelatin silver print measuring 50.5 x 40.6 cm. The Swiss-born photographer, renowned for his groundbreaking 1958 book *The*—a raw documentary of mid-century U.S. life—continued evolving in the late 1970s. By this time, Frank had embraced more introspective and experimental approaches, often infusing personal emotion into institutional subjects like hospitals, which evoke themes of vulnerability and transience. What sets this work apart is Frank's innovative mixed-media technique: a tradit...
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...