Classic Photographs
Classic Photographs
Men of Air (New York)
Lot Closed
October 5, 03:46 PM GMT
Estimate
30,000 - 50,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Robert Frank
1924 - 2019
Men of Air (New York)
gelatin silver print, signed and annotated 'NYC' and '2017' in ink on the reverse, 1947
image: 9 ½ by 6 in. (24.1 by 15.2 cm.)
By descent through family
Robert Frank: Black and White Things (Washington, D. C.: National Gallery of Art, 1994), unpaginated
Sarah Greenough and Philip Brookman, Robert Frank: Moving Out (Washington, D. C.: National Gallery of Art, 1994, p. 30
Sarah Greenough, Looking In: Robert Frank’s “The Americans” Washington, D. C.: National Gallery of Art, 2009), p. 10
Jane Livingston, The New York School: Photographs, 1936-1963 (New York, 1992), p. 91
The photographs in Lots 105, 106, and 107 come originally from the collection of Roger Brunschwig, Robert Frank’s cousin. Cousins Roger and Claude Brunschwig sailed to America in November 1946, and Frank – disillusioned with life in his native Switzerland following World War II – joined them in New York City in March 1947. The cousins’ remembrances pepper R J Smith’s recent biography American Witness: The Art and Life of Robert Frank (2017).
Gifted by Frank to Roger Brunschwig in the late 1940s or early 1950s, this early print was signed by the photographer in 2017 when his great nephew visited him in New York.