Steidl The Visual Diaries

The Visual Diaries presents, for the first time together, the six introspective volumes that are the most important in Robert Frank’s late bookmaking practice. Known as his visual diaries and originally published between 2010 and 2017, the books imaginatively combine iconic photos from Frank’s early career with the more private pictures he made in later life. Black-and-white photos taken on 35mm film, including some from The Americans, mix with contemporary photos, often color Polaroids. Quiet still lifes, contemplative landscapes and urban scenes, self-portraits, and spontaneous endearing shots of friends, colleagues and the photographer’s wife wife, artist June Leaf, show the life he lived in their homes in Bleecker Street, New York, and Mabou, Nova Scotia. With these images Frank created seemingly casual layouts that recall the look and spirit of a private album or scrapbook, and comment on memory and the passage of time. Factual captions and short, sometimes cryptic texts are scattered throughout the books—his thoughts, fragments of conversations, poems, notes. Frank’s highly personal approach to these books suggests how the past tempered his present, and show how his life was not only documented in but shaped by bookmaking. The visual diaries are without doubt a reflection upon Frank’s later life and past, but even when he was looking back he was looking towards the future. Right up until his passing in 2019, Robert Frank remained as innovative and ambitious as ever, and the book was the primary expression of his steadfast artistic curiosity .