In the early days of Truevision, the company I co-founded in my twenties, I hired an engineer from Switzerland named Frank Löffel for the role of an ASIC (chip) Designer. He wrote a well-researched letter describing his skills and capabilities, as well as how they would benefit the company. We granted him an interview, were impressed, and proceeded to offer him the job. He later told me we were the only company to respond to 30 similar letters he had sent out to other potential employers. When he moved to the US to start work, he had no place to live, so I invited him to stay in my spare bedroom. Eventually, he got his own place and went on to work for the company for several years. Frank and I both shared an interest in landscape photography. He was most drawn to deserts and his work was at a level I can only aspire to reach. We reconnected after ~20 years while we were both attending the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) trade show in Las Vegas. After the show ended we spent a day together shooting photography in Death Valley. I have wonderful memories of that day but damn few photos of Frank to share beyond the one above. Frank was a loner and would work intermittently to fund his passion for desert photography. He had a Toyota Land Cruiser fitted with huge tires and a pop-top camper. It had several spares on the roof along with extra gas cans, car jacks, and traction ramps. It was fitted with solar panels and storage areas for all his photo gear. He had recently spent several months in the Bolivian high dessert and had driven up from South America.

I recently learned that Frank died 6 months ago. At the time, he was being held in an Iranian prison where he reportedly committed suicide. The Iranian’s claimed he was a spy taking photos of a military base near where he was arrested, and it is suspected that he was tortured. My guess is he was there shooting landscape photography of the deserts he loved so much, finding himself in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with a truck full of high-end photography gear and drones.

This was unbelievably sad news to receive, but even worse is that I can find no record of his online photography portfolio. He devoted much of his life to making beautiful images of some of the most remote and desolate places on Earth, and now it appears his photographic legacy may be lost forever as well.

Frank is pictured below in an early Truevision company picnic photo with his girlfriend. He is directly below the Frisbee.

I offer my condolences to his sister, wife, and son, and pledge I will do all in my power to recover his photographs.