Robert Frank | In Canada

Exhibition Dates: November 5 – December 22, 2005

Opening reception: Saturday, November 5, 2-5 PM

It is impossible to consider 20^th century western art without lingering upon the work of Robert Frank. His photographs, films, and mixed-media works have consistently garnered critical praise while reaching a broad populous of art lovers, academics, and collectors. Born in Zurich in 1924, Frank moved to New York in 1947. He was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 1955 at a time when he was traveling by car across the United States, undertaking a photographic exploration of the nation. The result was a body of work over 20,000 images strong, and a book published in 1958 titled simply The Americans. This publication is recognized as a seminal point in the history of photography: as a departure from the thematic and aesthetic norms of documentary photography at that time, and in its overwhelming influence on all photography that followed it.

Since 1970, Frank has split his time between New York and Mabou, a small community on Cape Breton Island. This shift to a quieter lifestyle precipitated a period of introspective and extremely personal work that has continued to the present. The big cities and diverse cultural landscape were gone, traded for seclusion amidst a rocky and rugged landscape. With few other places to turn, Frank frequently focused the camera on himself and his family and their lives.