Jona Frank


Jona Frank is an American portrait photographer living in Santa Monica, California. She has made work about youth culture, both from an outsider's perspective—High School, Right and The Modern Kids —as well as about her own childhood—Cherry Hill. Her work is held in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Museum of [Fine Arts, Houston] and the San Francisco [Museum of Modern Art].

Early life and education

Frank was born in Camden, New Jersey and grew up in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. She is the youngest of four children and the only girl. "Frank's mother, a homemaker who hid her depression, prescribed rigid Catholicism and strict gender roles, insisting on Holly Hobbie wallpaper in her daughter's room and baking impeccable pies."
Frank studied English and earned a master's in film production at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

Work

Frank's photobook High School, on the hierarchies in American school life, "examined the different subcultures that teenagers try out as they're trying to formulate individual identities."
Right: Portraits from the Evangelical Ivy League examines Patrick Henry College, "an evangelical Christian school that was created to welcome the first generation of home-schooled teenagers into the university environment", youths with aspirations to become Republican politicians. "Frank also photographs a selection of the teenagers in the environments they grew up in. The book also contains examples of students' homework, interviews with students, and essays by Frank, curator Colin Westerbeck, and writer Hanna Rosin.
The Modern Kids contains portraits of boys and young men in amateur boxing gyms in the northwest of England, as well as some portraits of them with female partners. The work was made in three gyms over four years from 2010.
Cherry Hill: a Childhood Reimagined is a memoir in which Frank reconstructs scenes from her youth using staged photographs, a lavish set and production, costumes, props and wardrobe. A cast of actors—including Laura Dern—portray Frank's younger self and family members. Frank also includes autobiographical essays. According to Ayla Angelos writing for It's Nice That, "the exceptionally poised photographs elaborately allude to a young girl's struggle growing up in a stifling suburban dwelling." As described by Dana Goodyear in The New Yorker, "Frank documents her family's quiet implosion: her mother, deteriorating, would silently retreat to her room, in a pink robe, and emerge, pockets full of Kleenex; her beloved older brother, who hid his sexuality, had a psychotic breakdown."

Publications

  • High School. Los Angeles: Arenas Street, 2004..
  • Right: Portraits from the Evangelical Ivy League. San Francisco: Chronicle, 2008.. With essays by Frank, Colin Westerbeck and Hanna Rosin.
  • The Modern Kids. Heidelberg, Germany: Kehrer, 2015.. With an essay by Bruce Weber.
  • Cherry Hill: a Childhood Reimagined. New York: Monacelli, 2020.. Photographs and text by Frank.

    Films

  • Catholic School
  • Between Classes
  • Senior Portrait
  • Baby Faced Assassin – short, about boxer Paul Butler

    Solo exhibitions

  • Boys in Progress, DNJ Gallery, Santa Monica, CA, 2009
  • Jona Frank: Model Home, Bowdoin [College Museum of Art], Brunswick, Maine, February 24 – June 5, 2022

    Collections

Frank's work is held in the following permanent collections: