BIO

Roberto Frankenberg is a Paris-based photographer whose work navigates the spaces between portrait and landscape, memory and presence.

Born in Porto Alegre, Brazil, to a Dutch father and Brazilian mother, he discovered photography as a teenager, drawn to its quiet ability to suspend time. After studying business administration, he began his career as an assistant in a fashion and advertising studio in São Paulo, where he developed a technical foundation that would later support a more introspective artistic practice.

Since relocating to Paris, Frankenberg has eventually shifted away from fashion to explore more personal and contemplative themes. Faces and places—encountered, remembered, or imagined—lie at the heart of his work. His images have appeared among others in The New York Times, The Guardian, Wired, Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair, Libération, Le Monde

He is also a lecturer at Gobelins, L’École de l’Image in Paris, where he leads masterclasses on the practice of portraiture.

Selected Personal Projects

– Traces: A reflection on inherited memory and trauma, rooted in his family’s history and the sites of Nazi extermination camps

– Full Moon: A series of moonlit landscapes exploring slowness and timelessness

Exhibitions 
– 2024: Traces, solo exhibition, Museu Judaico de São Paulo, Brazil

– 2021: L’Énigme et le moment suspendu, solo exhibition of his portraits at the 3rd Biennale de la Photographie à Paris

– 2020: Traces featured in the group exhibition Invisible Wounds at the Graves Gallery, in the Sheffield Museum, Sheffield, UK — an exhibition exploring the enduring presence of trauma and how landscapes bear witness to history

– 2015: Traces, solo show, at the Museu da Imagem e do Som, São Paulo, Brazil                                                    

– 2015: Der de Libé, Map Photo Festival, Toulouse – a selection of portraits shot for newspaper Libération

– 2014: Traces solo exhibition featured at  Le Mois de la Photo à Paris – under the patronage of La Maison Européenne de la Photographie                                                                                                                                                              

– 2012: Regards Portrait, group show of portraits with Modds Agency, under the patronage of La Maison Européenne de la Photographie                                                                                                                                                    

– 2010: Full Moon, solo exhibition, Île de Batz, Brittany, France

– 2009: Full Moon, featured at the Promenades Photographiques Festival, in Vendôme, France

Editorial Collaborations
France: Libération, Le Monde, Télérama, L’Équipe Magazine, GQ, Vanity Fair, Air France Magazine
USA: The New York Times, Time Magazine, Fortune, Travel & Leisure, Departures
UK: Wired, The Guardian, The Times, The Observer, Condé Nast Traveler, Financial Times Magazine
Germany: SZ Magazin, Stern

Other Collaborations
Hermès, Bentley, Richemont, Montblanc, Roger Dubuis, Barclays, Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental, Havas, Accor, Alstom, Safran, PSG, and publishers such as Knopf, Albin Michel, Flammarion, and Grasset.