COLOGNE.- Zander Galerie announced an exhibition that brings to life the visual narrative of What We Have Seen from Robert Frank’s celebrated series of visual diaries. It explores people and places across his long and multifaceted life through images and fragments of memory presented through the artist’s original maquette. The exhibition has been realized in close collaboration with the Robert Frank Foundation and reconstructs the image sequence as conceived by the artist.

What We Have Seen / Was Haben Wir Gesehen was published by Steidl in 2016 and belongs to Robert Frank’s late group of photobooks that function as visual diaries. The work brings together photographs, fragments, handwritten words, and recurring motifs, moving between different times and places in Frank’s life. Rather than following a linear narrative, the sequence characteristically unfolds as a rhythm of memory and perception. Images of friends and family, everyday surroundings, travel, and loss are interwoven with textual elements and repetitions, emphasizing the act of looking back and the passage of time. The maquette reveals the book as a carefully constructed visual composition, in which sequencing, intervals, and echoes are as significant as the individual images themselves.

Robert Frank (1924–2019) is one of the most influential figures in the history of photography. Born in Zurich, he emigrated to the United States in 1947 and fundamentally transformed photographic language with The Americans (1954–1957), a work that challenged established aesthetic and social conventions through its subjective, fragmentary, and deeply personal vision. His practice consistently moved beyond documentary photography, embracing ambiguity, imperfection, and the photobook as a central artistic medium.

The exhibition situates What We Have Seen within Frank’s wider practice, foregrounding his commitment to the photobook as a primary artistic format and his lasting influence on generations of photographers and visual artists. Through his work, Frank has helped shape the canon of modern photography and broadened international perceptions of the medium’s possibilities, making his contributions essential to both photographic history and contemporary art.

Opening: Saturday, 31 January 2026, 3-5pm