34th Street, New York City
1947
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
image: 48 × 32.5 cm (18 7/8 × 12 13/16 in.) sheet: 50.8 × 40.64 cm (20 × 16 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Corcoran Collection (Gift of the FRIENDS of the Corcoran Gallery of Art)
Accession Number
2015.19.4891
Art Historical Context
In the vibrant heart of post-World War II New York City Robert Frank's *34th Street, New York City (1947) offers candid snapshot of urban life. gelatin silver print, measuring 48 × 32.5 cm (image) on a 50.8 × 40.64 cm sheet, captures the energy of midtown Manhattan's 34th Street—a hub of shoppers, workers, and pedestrians the city's postwar boom. Frank, a Swiss-born photographer who arrived in the U.S that same year, honed his eye for street photography here, foreshadowing his later masterpiece *The Americans* (1958), which redefined documentary work. The gelatin silver print medium, a staple...
About the Artist
Robert Frank
Robert Frank (1924-2019) was a Swiss-American photographer and documentary filmmaker whose revolutionary approach to documentary photography fundamentally transformed the medium and influenced generations of artists. Born in Zurich, Switzerland, on November 9, 1924, to a middle-class Jewish family, Frank began his photographic apprenticeship in 1941, working with commercial photographers before im...