Butcher shop window, Paris

1949

Camera magazine: the “new photography” of Switzerland

The new editor of Camera magazine, Walter Laubli, publishes a substantial portfolio of Jakob Tuggener alongside the work of the 25-year-old Frank, who has just returned to his native Switzerland after two years abroad, including some of his first pictures from New York; the magazine promotes the two as representatives of the “new photography” of Switzerland. Tuggener, first mentioned to him by his boss and mentor, the Zurich commercial photographer Michael Wolgensinger, becomes a role model for the younger artist.

1949–1950

Travels in South America and Europe; a hand-made book on Peru

He soon leaves again to travel in South America and Europe, creates another hand-made book of photographs shot in Peru, and returns to the U.S. in 1950.

1950

The group show “51 American Photographers” at MoMA

The year is momentous for Frank: after meeting Edward Steichen he takes part in the group show 51 American Photographers at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

1950

Married: Mary Frank

1953

Back in New York and the “New York School”

He returns to New York and works as a freelance photojournalist for magazines including McCall’s, Vogue and Fortune. Associating with photographers such as Saul Leiter and Diane Arbus, he helps form what Jane Livingston has termed the New York School of photographers of the 1940s and 1950s.

26 May 1953 – 23 August 1953

Exhibition: Postwar European Photography