.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
After being awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1955 and 1956, Swiss-born photographer Robert Frank spent two years travelling across the United States taking photographs that offered a nuanced commentary of his adopted country. The resulting publication, The Americans, first released in 1958 in France and the following year by Grove Press in New York, is still considered one of the most influential books in Post-War photography. Parade-Hoboken, New Jersey, the opening photograph of The Americans, serves as a stirring example of how Frank employs the American flag as a motif of particular critical potency. Frank commented that, '[it is] a threatening picture,' setting the tone for the rest of the book, and distinguishing itself as one of Frank’s most iconic images. Parade-Hoboken, New Jersey depicts two solitary women standing in upper-story windows of a brick building, one is half-obscured by shadow and the other is masked by a flag gallantly streaming across the frame. In The Photography Book, Ian Jeffrey comments in relation to the image that, 'National emblems may provide a focus, but they also stand in the way of seeing' (Jeffrey, The Photography Book, Phaidon Press, 1997).
Similarly, Political Rally – Chicago, 1955 depicts a scene of passive defacement; a young man concealed by his own tuba, brandished with gusto during a scene of patriotic convocation. At the urging of John Szarkowski, distinguished photohistorian Beaumont Newhall included this photograph in the 1964 revision of his seminal History of Photography as a select example of contemporary photography. Later, Szarkowski wrote about this photograph, 'Robert Frank's fine flatulent black joke on American politics can be read as either farce or anguished protest. ... From the fine shiny sousaphone rises a comic strip balloon that pronounces once more the virtue of ritual patriotism' (Szarkowski, Looking at Photographs, The Museum of Modern Art, 1973).
Other prints of these images reside in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
Similarly, Political Rally – Chicago, 1955 depicts a scene of passive defacement; a young man concealed by his own tuba, brandished with gusto during a scene of patriotic convocation. At the urging of John Szarkowski, distinguished photohistorian Beaumont Newhall included this photograph in the 1964 revision of his seminal History of Photography as a select example of contemporary photography. Later, Szarkowski wrote about this photograph, 'Robert Frank's fine flatulent black joke on American politics can be read as either farce or anguished protest. ... From the fine shiny sousaphone rises a comic strip balloon that pronounces once more the virtue of ritual patriotism' (Szarkowski, Looking at Photographs, The Museum of Modern Art, 1973).
Other prints of these images reside in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.