Untitled
c. 2012
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
2 diffusion transfer prints
Dimensions
image (each): 9.5 × 7.3 cm (3 3/4 × 2 7/8 in.) sheet (each): 10.8 × 8.6 cm (4 1/4 × 3 3/8 in.) mount: 25.2 × 21.2 cm (9 15/16 × 8 3/8 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Jane P. Watkins
Accession Number
2015.186.1.1
Art Historical Context
Robert Frank, the Swiss-born photographer renowned for groundbreaking 1958 book *The Americans*, produced this untitled diptych around 2012, late in his prolific career. Frank revolutionized documentary photography with his raw, unflinching portraits of mid-20th-century America capturing social undercurrents through a gritty, spontaneous style. By the 2010s, his work had evolved toward more intimate, abstract explorations, often using portable instant film to seize fleeting moments without the constraints of traditional darkrooms. These two diffusion transfer prints—each a small, vivid image ...
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...