Robert Frank: Photos

In 1961 with The Americans, the Art Institute of Chicago became the first museum to accord Robert Frank (American, born Switzerland 1924) a solo exhibition. The museum’s photography curator at the time, Hugh Edwards, purchased 30 photographs from this now-legendary series for the permanent collection, and in 2000, the artist generously gifted a further 38 photographs—works that were openly personal and very different from his chronicling of the state of the country in The Americans.

This exhibition dedicated to Frank focuses on the museum's latest acquisition of the artist's work, his 2014 book, Partida. The works are surrounded by photographs chosen from the artist's gift to the museum in 2000. Meanwhile, a companion exhibition, The Photographer’s Curator, surveys the breadth of Edwards’s tenure at the Art Institute.

The exhibition opened with a special pop-up presentation, conceived by the celebrated photographer and his longtime publisher, Gerhard Steidl. The two-week-only display included 29 photographs from Partida. A compact “full-career” retrospective surrounded it, featuring reproductions on newsprint banners tacked to the wall, films projected from portable video “beamers”, and books hung in midair across the gallery.

Top image: Robert Frank. Paolo Roversi, Mabou, 2005/14. Promised gift of Ralph and Nancy Segall. © Robert Frank, from the book Partida. Courtesy of Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York.