London

Robert Frank

1951 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

Although Frank's reputation was secured with The Americans-the 1958 publication of his Beat-inflected American series (1955-57)-he developed his eye and methods in Peru, Paris, London, and Wales between 1946 and 1953. In this winter street scene, Frank composes a modernist assemblage with a double-decker bus and its passengers, Lord Nelson's Column, and a leafless tree crowned by roosting birds. Like much of the conceptual art and Beat poetry of the next twenty years, the information is provisional and the effect unsettling. The London pictures have never been published as a suite and thus have yet to be recognized as one of the artist's best and most evocative series.

Artist

Robert Frank

Date

1951

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1986