Student looking through microscope, Boston

1924–1945

Childhood in Zürich and the war years

He grows up in Zürich in a business-oriented Jewish family: his mother, Rosa Zucker (other accounts give her name as Regina), had a Swiss passport, while his father, Hermann, from Frankfurt, had become stateless after losing his German citizenship as a Jew, so Swiss citizenship had to be applied for separately for Robert and his older brother, Manfred. The family remained safe in Switzerland during the Second World War, but the threat of Nazism shaped his understanding of oppression.

1946

His first hand-made book, “40 Fotos”

He turns to photography, in part as a means to escape the confines of his business-oriented family and home; after training under a few photographers and graphic designers he creates his first hand-made book of photographs, 40 Fotos.

1947

Emigrates to the United States

He emigrates to the United States and secures a job in New York City as a fashion photographer for Harper’s Bazaar.

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.