Robert Frank - Photographs New York Tuesday, October 1, 2019 | Phillips

Photographs

New York Auction 1 October 2019

  • Provenance

    Onview, New York, 2001

  • Literature

    The Americans, no. 1
    Greenough, Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans, pp. 211, 460, Contact no. 1
    Frank, The Lines of My Hand, n.p.
    Frank, Storylines, frontispiece 3
    Aperture, Robert Frank, cover
    Galassi, Robert Frank: In America, p. 107
    Greenough and Brookman, Robert Frank: Moving Out, pp. 111, 175
    Galassi, Walker Evans & Company, pl. 316
    Szarkowski, Photography Until Now, p. 258
    Campany, The Open Road: Photography & The American Road, p. 45
    Szarkowski, The Photographer's Eye, p. 155

  • Catalogue Essay

    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.

  • Artist Biography

    Robert Frank

    Swiss • 1924

    As one of the leading visionaries of mid-century American photography, Robert Frank has created an indelible body of work, rich in insight and poignant in foresight. In his famed series The Americans, Frank travelled the United States, capturing the parade of characters, hierarchies and imbalances that conveyed his view of the great American social landscape.

    Frank broke the mold of what was considered successful documentary photography with his "snapshot aesthetic." It is Frank's portrayal of the United States through grit and grain that once brought his work to the apex of criticism, but has now come to define the art of documentary photography.

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54

Robert Frank

Parade, Hoboken, New Jersey

1955
Gelatin silver print, probably printed 1960s.
6 1/8 x 9 3/8 in. (15.6 x 23.8 cm)
Signed in ink in the margin; 'Robert Frank Archive' stamp on the verso.

Estimate
$70,000 - 90,000 

Sold for $162,500

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Vanessa Hallett
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Photographs

New York Auction 1 October 2019