FRANK ROBERT (1924 ) Miami Beach

Sale 2124 - Lot 118

Price Realized: $ 31,200

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 30,000 - $ 40,000

FRANK, ROBERT (1924- )
"Miami Beach." Silver print, 13x8 1/2 inches (33x21.6 cm.), with Frank's signature, title and date, in ink, on verso. 1956

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From the collection of Daniel Wolf.

In 1956 Robert Frank visited Miami on his now near-epic road trip across the country, taking photographs of dark interiors highlighted by neon as well as pedestrians, passengers in an elevator, and the beach. Living on a grant awarded by the Guggenheim Foundation, Frank spent 1955-57 on a series of trips shooting some 28,000 frames of film. Of this wealth of images, 83 photographs would eventually be selected and included in his classic "The Americans."

As may be seen in the photograph offered here, Frank's low-lit, unusually focused, and radically cropped pictures deviated from popular photographic techniques of the day. As a result, he had trouble securing an American publisher for his work. Indeed the first, French edition of "The Americans, which was published in 1958, seems to savor Frank's critical eye. The American edition, however, which was published by Grove Press the following year, joins Frank with the well-known Beat writer Jack Kerouac, who wrote the introduction.

Now one of the seminal titles of photographic literature, "The Americans" stands as an uncompromising look at American culture and society. Skeptical, lyrical, and fresh, Frank's images both document and construct America at mid-century in all of its tensions and anxieties.