Letters from Chicago

The exhibition showed 40 black and white photographs by Gustav Frank with motifs from Ulm, the Swabian Jura and Chicago. At the same time, the film “Letters from Chicago” by director Sibylle Tiedemann, who was born in Neu-Ulm, was shown as a video. In this multiple award-winning film, she portrayed Lore and Gustav Frank, both born in Ulm before and during the First World War. Frank was a passionate photographer and had already photographed Ulm and the region in the 1920s. In 1939 the Jewish couple had to emigrate to the USA via Great Britain. In Chicago they married and started a new life.

As an American soldier, Gustav Frank returned to Ulm in 1945 in search of his parents and photographed his hometown, which was totally destroyed. His search was in vain – the whole family was murdered during the Holocaust. Back in Chicago, Gustav Frank has been photographing modern America since the 1950s.