Robert Frank’s Parade, Hoboken, New Jersey, is one of the seminal photographs from his book The Americans, and one that is immediately identified with its maker. The American flag is one of several central motifs running through The Americans; its ubiquity was a source of deep interest to Frank, who noted, ‘I liked the visual, graphic image of that flag, I think it’s a very good flag.’ Indeed, the stars-and-stripes appears throughout the book in several signature images, suspended in mid-air at a Fourth of July picnic, emerging from the bell of a tuba at a Chicago political rally, hanging between presidential portraits on the wall of a Detroit bar, and elsewhere. In Frank’s handling, this highly-charged national symbol appears as opaque or translucent, as a statement of national pride or simply as an accessory to the pageantry of American politics.

Parade, Hoboken, New Jersey, was taken in March 1955 on the occasion of the city’s centennial. In it, the faces of the two figures are obscured, one by shadow and the other by the flag itself. Of all of Frank’s flag images, Parade is the most reflective of the decade that saw the intensification of the Cold War and the McCarthy hearings. Frank’s dual status as an outsider—as an artist, and as a European—gave him a unique vantage point from which to penetrate American culture and create an image now regarded as one of the signature photographs of America made in the 20th century.