Frank, Robert (1924– )

US photographer. He is best known for his informal and unromanticized pictures of American life. These were published, with a foreword by the US novelist Jack Kerouac, as The Americans (1959). He then concentrated mainly on film-making until 1966, when he virtually gave up photography.

Born in Zürich, Switzerland, Frank emigrated to New York in 1947. During 1947–51 he did freelance fashion and advertising photography for Harper's and The New York Times among others. The first European to receive a Guggenheim scholarship (1955), he spent the following two years travelling across the USA to capture images of daily life with his 35mm camera, publishing The Americans. One of the founders of the New American Cinema Group, he received the Edward MacDowell Medal for outstanding contribution to the arts in 2002.