Father Photographer

Robert Frank's father, Henry, was both the proprietor of a bicycle shop in Zurich, and a keen amateur photographer. Album makes public for the first time a selection of Henry Frank's photographs, including landscapes, family portraits, still-lifes and cityscapes. When Robert Frank emigrated to the United States in 1947, a wooden box containing his father's stereophotographs was one of the few objects he brought with him. In 2008, that box and the fragile photographic glass plates within it were hand-escorted to Steidl in Gottingen, Germany, where they were scanned in tri-tone in preparation for this book. Designed by Robert Frank, Album reveals Henry Frank to be a talented photographer, a keen traveler and an enthusiast of modern means of transport. This intimately-designed photo album is a revelation of the unknown photographer Henry Frank, and a historical photographic document of the early twentieth century, as well as a new chapter in Robert Frank's ongoing bookmaking.