"When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of poem twice."
-Robert Frank

In his 1955 application to a Guggenheim Fellowship, Robert Frank expressed his wish to reveal “what one naturalized American finds to see in the United States that signifies the kind of civilization born here and spreading elsewhere...things that are there anywhere and everywhere— easily found, not easily selected and interpreted.” That is, Frank’s wish was to roll up America’s manicured lawn to reveal the underlying tensions, discrepancies and hierarchies that he sensed were largely absent from mainstream media. Over a period of nine months, Frank traveled across the United States, armed with an objective if sensitive eye, searching for moments of hidden irony that would have otherwise gone unrecorded. From the twenty-seven thousand frames at the end of his trip, Frank narrowed his selection down to the eighty-two that he felt embodied the mission of the trip, rich in poignancy and critique.

The American flag is featured in four photographs within The Americans: Fourth of July–Jay, New York, 1954; Navy Recruiting Station, Post Office– Butte, Montana, 1956; Bar– Detroit, 1955; and Parade– Hoboken, New Jersey, 1955, as seen in the current lot. In lieu of capturing the cheering crowds, the flickering confetti or the familial joy that typified most photojournalistic depictions of Fourth of July parades, Frank chose to turn his lens to two individuals peering behind isolated windows nearby, neither appearing celebratory or gleeful. The flag that billows between them appears cumbersome, fully obfuscating one of the individuals’ face. The image is a simple and stark reminder of the potential complication underlying the intersection of nationalism and identity and stands in contrast to the contrived images of optimism that largely dominated Post-War American media.