Frank dedicated Life Dances On to his daughter, Andrea, and to his good friend and former film collaborator Danny Seymour, both of whom he unexpectedly lost in the mid-1970s—Andrea dying in a plane crash in Guatemala; Danny disappearing on a sailing trip in Colombia. In the passage of the film on view nearby, Frank attempts to find symbols for his grief by fixing his lens on objects within his Mabou home and its surroundings, such as the dancing toy skeleton seen in this image. Later, he uses a double exposure to juxtapose photographic portraits of Andrea and Danny against the lapping water of the sea.
Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue, Sep 15, 2024–Jan 11, 2025
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Robert Frank
American, born Switzerland.1924–2019 294 works onlineRobert Frank’s restless, gritty, melancholic vision marked him as an astute documentarian of the postwar American landscape. Born into a German-Jewish family in Zurich in 1924, he developed an interest in photography at an early age and apprenticed with several photographers in his teens.
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