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‘Visionary’ Swiss–American photographer Robert Frank dies aged 94

Robert Frank, a trailblazing documentary photographer whose raw, piercing aesthetic placed him among the 20th century's greats, has died, according to his gallery. He was 94 years old.

'Visionary' Swiss–American photographer Robert Frank dies aged 94
Beat writer Jack Kerouac said Robert Frank "sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film." Photo: BRYAN THOMAS/GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP

The Swiss-born photographer rose to fame with the publication of his landmark book “The Americans,” an unflinching look at US society that proved hugely influential.

A spokesperson from the Manhattan gallery Pace/MacGill told the AFP news agency that Frank died of natural causes in Inverness, Nova Scotia.

Robert Frank's 'Sidelines' exhibition in France in 2018. Photo: BERTRAND LANGLOIS, BRYAN THOMAS / AFP / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA

His seminal book – published in France in 1958 and in America one year later – emerged out of a series of road trips across the United States with his family in the mid-1950s, a journey akin to those made by his friend and writer Jack Kerouac and others from the “Beat Generation.”

Eschewing classic photographic techniques, Frank pioneered the snapshot, capturing telling vignettes in black and white as they presented themselves, exploring the realities of everyday people for whom the American Dream rang hollow.

He produced 28,000 images that were boiled down to 83 for the book that rewrote the rules of photojournalism.

As Kerouac wrote in the preface of the US edition, Frank “sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film.”

At lunch counters and drive-in movie theaters, on Route 66 and at champagne get-togethers, his gritty, subjective style laid bare a wide range of emotions and relationships, notably racial, that were rarely found in the popular illustrated magazines of the time.

Praising Frank's “extraordinarily keen intellect,” his gallerist and friend Peter MacGill said the artist “changed the way the world looks at America.”

“Through the unvarnished, phenomenally capable eye of an immigrant, he saw us for what we are.”

'Tired of romanticism'

Born on November 9, 1924 in Zurich, Switzerland, Frank grew up in a family of German Jewish industrialists, and became passionate about photography at the age of 12. He trained as a photo assistant in Zurich and Basel from 1940 to 1942.

Photographer Robert Frank rose to fame with the publication of his landmark book “The Americans,” an unflinching look at US society that proved hugely influential

After World War II, he moved to the United States, pursuing fashion and reporting photography for magazines that included Fortune, Life, Look and Harper's Bazaar.

He grew “tired of romanticism,” and, armed with his gut and a pair of Leicas, Frank began recording scenes of daily life.

He developed a friendship with fellow photographer Walker Evans, whose Depression-era photos intrigued him.

But Frank pursued themes including alienation, mass culture and veiled violence with a spontaneity that stood in sharp contrast to Evans' carefully crafted work.

A Guggenheim fellowship gave him the opportunity to visit 48 US states, and he brought back frames of a weary, hard and divided country.

He also found beauty in the overlooked, photographing cars, diners and jukeboxes that went down in the iconography of American life.

And yet, “he never crossed over into celebrity,” said photographer Nan Goldin. “He's famous because he made a mark. He collected the world.”

Sick of goodbyes

As his reputation grew, Frank abruptly shifted into underground filmmaking, making several films, including “Pull My Daisy” (1959), based on Beat icon Neal Cassady, and a documentary about The Rolling Stones called “Cocksucker Blues” (1972), which was never released.

Footage from Robert Frank's never-released Rolling Stones documentary Cocksucker Blues.

After learning of his death, the legendary English rockers he chronicled dubbed him a “visionary,” saying in a statement that Frank “was an incredible artist whose unique style broke the mould.”

Frank returned to photography after tragedy struck his family with the death of his daughter Andrea in a 1974 plane crash.

He divorced his first wife and had two children. His son Pablo, who suffered from schizophrenia, killed himself in 1994.

In the meantime, Frank's work had “shifted from being about what I saw to what I felt,” he told The Guardian. “I didn't believe in the beauty of a photograph anymore.”

He began to create montages, write on his pictures and scratch the negatives.

Remarking on one of Frank's staged silver gelatin prints from 1978 — called “Sick of Goodby's” for a phrase in it that is cursorily daubed on a mirror — the late rocker Lou Reed said “the photos speak of an acceptance of things as they are.”

“Robert Frank is a great democrat,” Reed said. “We're all in these photos. Paint dripping from a mirror like blood.”

“I'm sick of goodbyes. And aren't we all, but it's nice to see it said.”

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ART

African-born director’s new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

One of the rare African-born figures to head a German cultural institution, Bonaventure Ndikung is aiming to highlight post-colonial multiculturalism at a Berlin arts centre with its roots in Western hegemony.

African-born director's new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

The “Haus der Kulturen der Welt” (House of World Cultures), or HKW, was built by the Americans in 1956 during the Cold War for propaganda purposes, at a time when Germany was still divided.

New director Ndikung said it had been located “strategically” so that people on the other side of the Berlin Wall, in the then-communist East, could see it.

This was “representing freedom” but “from the Western perspective”, the 46-year-old told AFP.

Now Ndikung, born in Cameroon before coming to study in Germany 26 years ago, wants to transform it into a place filled with “different cultures of the world”.

The centre, by the river Spree, is known locally as the “pregnant oyster” due to its sweeping, curved roof. It does not have its own collections but is home to exhibition rooms and a 1,000-seat auditorium.

It reopened in June after renovations, and Ndikung’s first project “Quilombismo” fits in with his aims of expanding the centre’s offerings.

The exhibition takes its name from the Brazilian term “Quilombo”, referring to the communities formed in the 17th century by African slaves, who fled to remote parts of the South American country.

Throughout the summer, there will also be performances, concerts, films, discussions and an exhibition of contemporary art from post-colonial societies across Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania.

‘Rethink the space’

“We have been trying to… rethink the space. We invited artists to paint walls… even the floor,” Ndikung said.

And part of the “Quilombismo” exhibition can be found glued to the floor -African braids laced together, a symbol of liberation for black people, which was created by Zimbabwean artist Nontsikelelo Mutiti.

According to Ndikung, African slaves on plantations sometimes plaited their hair in certain ways as a kind of coded message to those seeking to escape, showing them which direction to head.

READ ALSO: Germany hands back looted artefacts to Nigeria

His quest for aestheticism is reflected in his appearance: with a colourful suit and headgear, as well as huge rings on his fingers, he rarely goes unnoticed.

During his interview with AFP, Ndikung was wearing a green scarf and cap, a blue-ish jacket and big, sky-blue shoes.

With a doctorate in medical biology, he used to work as an engineer before devoting himself to art.

In 2010, he founded the Savvy Gallery in Berlin, bringing together art from the West and elsewhere, and in 2017 was one of the curators of Documenta, a prestigious contemporary art event in the German city of Kassel.

Convinced of the belief that history “has been written by a particular type of people, mostly white and men,” Ndikung has had all the rooms in the HKW renamed after women.

These are figures who have “done something important in the advancement of the world” but were “erased” from history, he added. Among them is Frenchwoman Paulette Nardal, born in Martinique in 1896.

She helped inspire the creation of the “negritude” movement, which aimed to develop black literary consciousness, and was the first black woman to study at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Reassessing history

Ndikung’s appointment at the HKW comes as awareness grows in Germany about its colonial past, which has long been overshadowed by the atrocities committed during the era of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis.

Berlin has in recent years started returning looted objects to African countries which it occupied in the early 20th century — Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia and Cameroon.

“It’s long overdue,” said Ndikung.

He was born in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, into an anglophone family.

The country is majority francophone but also home to an anglophone minority and has faced deadly unrest in English-speaking areas, where armed insurgents are fighting to establish an independent homeland.

One of his dreams is to open a museum in Cameroon “bringing together historical and contemporary objects” from different countries, he said.

He would love to locate it in Bamenda, the capital of Cameroon’s restive Northwest region.

“But there is a war in Bamenda, so I can’t,” he says.

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