- 34th Street, New York
Sheet: 14 × 10 7/8 in. (35.6 × 27.6 cm)
Explore Further
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
Signed in black ink, recto, bottom right below image: Robert Frank.
Inscribed in pencil, verso, center: 6-153
Cataloguing data may change with further research.
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