Robert Frank b. 1924

signed, titled, and dated by the photographer in ink in the margin, the 'Robert Frank Archive' stamp, titled, dated, numbered '593' and annotated 'Lines 31' in an unidentified hand in pencil, and the copyright stamp, credited and dated in an unidentified hand in ink, on the reverse, matted, 1949, probably printed in the 1960s

Other prints of this image:

Robert Frank, Black White and Things (National Gallery of Art, 1994, in conjunction with the Moving Out exhibition), pl. 21

Robert Frank: The Lines of My Hand (New York, 1989), unpaginated

Robert Frank: Story Lines (London: Tate Modern, 2004, in conjunction with the exhibition), unpaginated

This image was originally selected by the photographer in 1952 for his planned, but at the time unrealized, volume of 34 images, Black White and Things.  In 1952, the book reached only the maquette stage, but was subsequently published in 1994, in conjunction with the National Gallery of Art's exhibition, Robert Frank: Moving Out.  The volume Black White and Things is a definitive statement of the young photographer's work in the late 1940s and early 1950s; his deft and deliberate sequencing of the images looks forward to The Americans, published later in the decade. 

Black White and Things was divided into the three sections suggested by the title, and 'Paris 1949 New Year'--also known as 'Tulip/Paris'--appears as the first plate in the book's Things section.  Frank took this uncharacteristically romantic image amidst the winter bustle of a Paris street.  Photographer Louis Stettner is the young man holding the tulip; it was destined for a woman he had met during a party at the Paris apartment of fellow photographer Todd Webb.