born Nov. 9, 1924, Zürich, Switz.
Swiss-born U.S. photographer.
In the 1940s he worked as a fashion photographer for Harper's Bazaar in Paris. He abandoned fashion work in 1947 to travel in the U.S. and South America and explore the use of the 35-mm camera. His collection The Americans (1959), with its gritty, discordant images of 1950s America, had enormous influence and established him as a major figure. After 1959 Frank turned to filmmaking; his short film Pull My Daisy (1959), a collaboration with Jack Kerouac , became an underground classic. A major later collection is Robert Frank: Moving Out (1994).