To coincide with the release of his new book, we decided to dedicate today’s edition to Frank Horvat, a photographer whose work continues to be neglected. We would like to thank Myrtille Beauvert and Jonas Cuénin for putting together this tribute.
Frank Horvat, 85, is releasing a book containing a large selection of his most beautiful photographs. Entitled La maison aux quinze clés (The House With Fifteen Keys) and divided into fifteen chapters, the book serves as a manifesto for multidisciplinary photography.
Horvat, born in 1928 in the Italian city of Abbazia, which is now the Croatian city of Opatija, has never cared much for borders. His life has been full of migrations, beginning in the late 1930s, when the war forced his family to seek refuge in Switzerland. From there he watched the world tear itself apart. When the chaos died down, he moved to Paris and later to Boulogne, “for the the space and rent,” and began taking his first photographic expeditions: India, Pakistan, Israel, Japan, Egypt, the United States, England, Italy. He was crossing both national and photographic borders. Horvat did it all: photojournalism, fashion photography, landscapes, animals, still life and digital. Today it’s almost held against him: he doesn’t fit easily into boxes, and resists the categorization that has bogged down photography over the years.
