Frank Gross: Based on a True Story

Frank Gross: Based on a True Story by Aline SmithsonMarch 3, 2013

Born in Klerksdorp, North West province, South Africa, Frank Gross currently resides in Toronto, Canada. Frank is an observer of people, of society, and of light and he manages to find moments of being that couple with a sense of urban disconnection. These glimpses of our challenged humanity, seconds of isolation and introspection, give nod to Edward Hopper, yet feel very much in the present.

Early in his photographic career, Frank was fortunate to work and learn from masters in the field of film and photography who mentored and enabled him to launch a successful career as a photographer and filmmaker. He worked with an array of clients including Loerie, Bessie, Int’l Film and TV Festival NY, London Int’l Film Festival, Clio, The One Show, Cannes (Marketing). He now focuses on his fine art photography. Frank has a book of Based on a True Story, available here.

Based on a True Story

“The beginning and end of all literary activity is the reproduction of the world that surrounds me, by means of the world that is within me, all things being grasped, related, recreated, moulded and reconstructed in a personal form and an original manner”- Goethe

I didn’t set out to make portraits, urban landscapes, or even street photographs. Looking back over the work, I see a search for self reflected in these images. When I observe how I framed the images through windows, and with lenses deliberately keeping my distance to avoid specific or individual portraits, it is evident that I was seeking the universal in the images and their implied narratives. It is me. It is you. It is all of our lives. A some-time record of emotion. The viewer is drawn into the image as a witness, observer, voyeur, and perhaps finds a commonality with the subjects, a sense of empathy. Aloneness, sadness, disconnection and marginalization become visible. The city as a psychological terrain. An in-scape. Here we play out our hopes and dreams, our fears and loneliness.