Frank Eugene

The German-American photographer Frank Eugene (1865-1936) is regarded internationally as one of the most innovative art photographers of the period prior to the first World War. He studied painting under Wilhelm von Diez at the Munich Academy of Art and was then active as a portrait painter of famous actors and musicians. He first came to the attention of a wider public as a photographer in 1899 on the occasion of a solo exhibition in the New York Camera Club. As a founder-member of the Photo-Secession, his works were included in almost all the important exhibitions in North America and Europe organized by that association. His method of manipulating his negatives by etching and drawing on them attracted particular attention and gained him the name of a painter-photographer. Frank Eugene was also successful in importing his unusual pictorial technique to his students at the School of Photography in Munich and the Academy of Graphic Arts and Book Design in Leipzig, where he taught portrait and art photography.