Robert Frank’s Scrapbook Footage

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In a remarkable posthumous discovery, unseen film footage by legendary photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank has been brought to light, offering a deeply personal portrait of the artist behind the lens. Best known for his searing documentation of postwar America and collaborations with the Beat poets and the Rolling Stones, Frank’s newly uncovered film reels—spanning from 1970 to 2006—reveal a quieter, more introspective side of his creative journey.

Curated by Frank’s longtime editor Laura Israel and art director Alex Bingham, and presented in partnership with the June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, the recovered footage has been transformed into a compelling multi-screen installation. Like pages from a visual scrapbook, these moving images piece together fragments of Frank’s life—snapshots of domestic moments, cross-continental travel, and interactions with friends and collaborators.

From the quiet comfort of a steaming tea kettle to fleeting glimpses of his wife, artist June Leaf, in her studio, the installation highlights Frank’s ability to find poetry in the everyday. Viewers follow his travels between homes in New York and Nova Scotia, through urban and rural landscapes across the U.S., Canada, and even distant cities like Beirut, Cairo, and Moscow. The result is a meditative, sometimes melancholic reflection of a life lived through observation.

This rediscovered body of work doesn’t just expand our understanding of Frank’s legacy—it brings us closer to the man himself, revealing an artist who found timeless beauty in the most ephemeral of moments.