Robert Frank
34th Street, New York

34th Street, New York

© The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation

34th Street, New York
34th Street, New York
ArtistAmerican, born Switzerland, 1924–2019
CultureAmerican
Titles
  • 34th Street, New York
Date1948, printed 1960s
Place depictedNew York City, New York, United States
MediumGelatin silver print
DimensionsImage: 13 3/8 × 8 5/8 in. (34 × 21.8 cm)
Sheet: 14 × 10 7/8 in. (35.6 × 27.6 cm)
Credit LineGift of P/K Associates
Object number84.912
Non exposé

Explore Further

Department
Photography
Object Type
Description

Taken shortly after he immigrated to the United States in
1947, this image is one of the first that earned the Swiss-born photographer Robert
Frank recognition in his new country. This view of an empty 34th Street, a
white traffic line leading from the camera to the distant valley between
buildings, struck a chord in New York. A shot taken just a moment earlier was
purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in 1950 and featured in Life
magazine in 1951. Though it was
made a full decade before Frank’s groundbreaking photobook
The Americans (1959), this image shares the disaffected sensibility
of those later photographs, which reveal an outsider’s perspective on the
nation’s people and places.




ProvenanceP/K Associates, New York; given to MFAH, 1984.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
Inscribed by artist in black ink, recto, bottom left below image: NYC 1948
Signed in black ink, recto, bottom right below image: Robert Frank.
Inscribed in pencil, verso, center: 6-153
Signed in black ink, recto, bottom right below image: Robert Frank.

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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1970
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1955
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1962
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1955
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1955–1956
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