A Musical About Me

28 November 1968

Leslie reveals the truth about “Pull My Daisy”

The film’s co-director Alfred Leslie reveals in a Village Voice piece that Pull My Daisy was not improvised at all: it was carefully planned, rehearsed and directed by him and Frank, who shot it with professional lighting.

1969

Separates from Mary and remarries

Frank and Mary separate; he later marries the sculptor June Leaf and in 1971 moves to Mabou on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, dividing his time between his home there, a former fisherman’s shack on the coast, and his Bleecker Street loft in New York.

1971 · Bopæl

Mabou

1972

The book “The Lines of My Hand”

Returning to still images, he publishes his second photographic book, The Lines of My Hand, described as a “visual autobiography” of largely personal photographs. He later largely gives up “straight” photography to create narratives out of constructed images and collages, with words, multiple frames and scratched and distorted negatives, though none of this later work achieves an impact comparable to that of The Americans.