Frank Horvat. Drugstore Entrance New York, 1984
Frank Horvat. Sealed Building, 55th St E New York, 1983.
He was full of years and we need not be too sad. But what an eye he had.
Maybe it’s enough just to remember that he was brilliant, in colour as well, as many people forget. In colour, he was as good as Harry Gruyaert. As good as Saul Leiter. Of these, the one that goes into Hodgson’s Choice is the Drugstore Entrance because it’s complicated enough I’d never get bored of it. It’s busy and still, and it makes me think of Sonny Stitt.
And maybe he quite liked yellow.
All these pictures come from his book SideWalk, published by Hatje Cantz this month (in 2020! Horvat was born in 1928. )
Frank Horvat. A Homeless Person in a Yellow Sleeping Bag, Tribeca, New York, 1984.
Frank Horvat. A Yellow Cab in New York, 1985
Frank Horvat. A Little Girl in the Back of a Car, New York, 1985. Reminds me very much of Helen Levitt’s great Spider Girl, also from New York, but perhaps a few years earlier. She could do colour, too, come to think of it.
Francis Hodgson 
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Frank was a good friend, and a great photographer, as well as someone with very clear ideas about what he photographed and how you should approach the role of photographer. We had many long discussions about photography, his own pictures, his philosophy of life, and how to present his work. His death comes just at the moment when an exhibition of his photographs can be found at the Maison Robert Doisneau in Gentilly, not far from Frank’s own home in Boulogne sur Seine, just inside the peripherique. His photographs made a great impact on the photography of the period from the 1950s to the 1990s and beyond. I shall miss him greatly. My sympathies go to all of his family and friends.
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