Museum Folkwang-Essen exhibits Robert Frank / Paris

Written by Administrator Wednesday, 14 May 2008 00:13

Essen, Germany - In the exhibition Robert Frank. Paris, the Fotografische Sammlung of the Museum Folkwang, Essen presents for the first time a broad selection of the photographer’s images of Paris taken in the beginning of the 1950’s. Some of the images are being shown in public for the first time; they were selected just for the exhibition in Essen and the accompanying book and in part newly enlarged. On exhibition through 6 July, 2008.

Many of the photographs taken by Robert Frank during his stay in Paris are known around the world today and belong to the standards of photo history. The 80 works selected by Robert Frank and the curator Ute Eskildsen show that Robert Frank’s experience in the “new world” – the native of Switzerland emigrated to New York in 1947 – sharpened his vision of Europe’s urban structures.

His visit to the French metropolis in 1951 was the second time he had returned to Europe. The photographer experienced the streets of Paris as a theater of human activity. With his camera, he observed the many small moments of everyday life in a major city: people out for a walk, road workers, street traders, events, meetings and affairs in passing in the cafés, on the boulevards and squares were his themes. Frank concentrated above all on flower sellers, they defined his image of Paris – and appeared again in his book Flower is Paris, Ford is Detroit, Mabou is Waiting (1987).

Frank’s photographs are in the tradition of the stroller, a literary figure, observing life around him as he drifts through the modern metropolis, and they draw on the famous Paris photos of Eugene Atget (1857-1927). Frank’s gaze was directed towards individuals in the French metropolis, but at the same time he explored the still life of the city, its mysterious appearances and scripts.

Robert Frank, born in Zurich in 1927, is seen today as one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century. During numerous trips, which led him to Paris and London, Wales, Italy, North and South America among others, Frank developed his highly subjective, narrative pictorial language. He first achieved fame with his book of 1958, The Americans, which opened the way for a new form of photo book, and with the experimental film Pull My Daisy from 1959. Further important works are the book Black White and Things (1954) and The Line of My Hand (1959) as well as the film Cocksucker Blues (1972). Today Frank lives in New York and Nova Scotia, Canada.

A publication, Robert Frank. Paris, will appear in the Steidl Verlag, Göttingen. Other exhibition sites: Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea, Cinisello Balsamo, Milan Province, November to December 2008 ; Jeu de Paume, Paris, January to March, 2009 ; Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam, April to May, 2009.

Visit the Museum Folkwang, Essen

Tel. +49(0) 201 – 88 45 301; Fax. +49 (0) 201 – 88 45 330; info-at-museum-folkwang.essen.de

Website :  www.museum-folkwang.de

---

Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~