Frank Horvat

(French, 1928–2020)

Frank Horvat is an Italian-born French photographer known for capturing a broad range of motifs in both color and black-and-white. Influenced by the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Horvat applied the aesthetics of photo journalism to capturing images of fashion models. “There's this idea that photography is a kind of testimony and therefore we're forbidden to tell lies with it,” he has explained. “I think that's nonsense. Photography isn't testimony.” Born on April 28, 1928 in Abbazia, Italy (present-day Opatija, Croatia), he and his family lived around Europe before settling in France in 1955. He made his debut as a photojournalist in the 1950s, and went on to collaborate with numerous fashion magazines, including Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, and Jardin des Modes. At the beginning of the 1980s, when an illness that affected his eyesight briefly forced him to put his camera aside, Horvat threw himself into a series of interviews with notable photographers, including Helmut Newton and Robert Doisneau. As early as 1989, Horvat became interested in digital photography, and this curiosity towards new technology led him to create his own iPad application, Horvatland, in 2011. The artist continues to live and work in Paris, France. Today, his works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris, and the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, among others.