Since founding Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco in 1979, Jeffrey Fraenkel has presented more than 350 exhibitions about photography and its relation to the other arts. Fraenkel works with museums and private collectors around the world, and is the primary representative for several key photographers from the medium's history, including Diane Arbus, Robert Adams, Lee Friedlander, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, and Garry Winogrand. The gallery works closely with the Estates of Peter Hujar and Bernd & Hilla Becher, and represents a number of important contemporary artists such as Hiroshi Sugimoto, Richard Misrach, Christian Marclay, Sophie Calle, Katy Grannan and Adam Fuss. In addition, Fraenkel is a specialist in American photography of the nineteenth century, particularly the work of Carleton E. Watkins.

Fraenkel's publications include Lee Friedlander's America by Car, The Little Screens, and Sticks & Stones, Richard Avedon's Made in France, Diane Arbus's The Libraries, Peter Hujar's Love & Lust, and compendiums such as Edward Hopper & Company, The Plot Thickens, and The Book of Shadows, among others.

Fraenkel has served on the Board of Directors of the Art Dealers Association of America, and on the Board of the Association of International Photography Art Dealers. Fraenkel's writings about his experiences as an art dealer and publisher appear in the anthology The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century.