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Title

US 91, leaving Blackfoot, Idaho

1956
printed 1960s

Artist

Robert Frank

Switzerland, United States of America

1924 –

  • Details

    Dates
    1956
    printed 1960s
    Media category
    Photograph
    Materials used
    gelatin silver photograph
    Dimensions
    20.4 x 30 cm image; 27.6 x 35.2 cm sheet
    Signature & date

    Signed l.r., recto sheet, black ink 'Robert Frank.' Dated l.l., recto sheet, black ink, '...1956'

    Credit
    Purchased with funds provided by The Russell Mills Foundation, 2015
    Location
    Not on display
    Accession number
    405.2015
    Copyright
    © Robert Frank, from The Americans

    Reproduction requests

    Artist information
    Robert Frank

    Works in the collection

    1

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  • About

    This image was an important inclusion in Robert Frank’s explosive 1958 book The Americans. A book of 83 photographs published first in France and then in the US in 1959, America was revealed as a country and culture deeply flawed. Perhaps only an outsider (Frank was Swiss) could have presented such a dispassionate view of the realities of post War USA. US 91, Leaving Blackfoot Idaho shows two young men picked up by the photographer. Though the men seem intently focussed on the road, the car windows are blank. A text by the English philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon is in the visor; this Frank had copied down when he visited Dorothea Lange before he set off on his epic journey to find the heart of America. That text reads: 'The contemplation of things as they are/without error or confusion/without substitution or imposture/is in itself a nobler thing/than a whole harvest of invention.'

  • Bibliography

    Referenced in 2 publications