One of the world’s most significant and influential photographers, Robert Frank has continually questioned and re-invented the photographic image and explored the narrative potential of sequences of photographs. Sixty years ago, in 1958, Robert Delpire in Paris published the first edition of his seminal book Les Américains. However, this perhaps most influential book in the history of photography was no spontaneous stroke of genius. The exhibition Sidelines on one hand retraces the evolution of the artist’s expressive style and his uncompromising search for a subjective truth before 1958 with series of photographs from Switzerland, Europe and South America. On the other it focuses on hitherto almost unknown pictures made in the 1950s while Frank was traveling in the US for Les Américains. Images that remained unpublished for editorial reasons and are now put into context with a select group of the famous classics from the book that shocked the world when it came out.
Exhibition curator: Martin Gasser.
Along with the exhibition, Laura Israel’s documentary Don’t Blink – Robert Frank (Robert Frank, l’Amérique dans le viseur), produced by Assemblage Films in association with ARTE France, is being shown at the Espace Van Gogh.
Information
Espace Van Gogh
Place Félix Rey, 13200 Arles, France
July 02, 2018 to September 23, 2018
