Robert Frank

signed in ink in the margin, numerical notations in pencil on the reverse, framed, Bloom Collection and Pace Wildenstein MacGill labels on the reverse, 1955, printed later

Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York, 1998

The Americans, no. 36

Sarah Greenough, Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans, pp. 253, 469, and 470, and Contact no. 36

U. S. Camera [Annual] 1958, p. 100

'A Pageant Portfolio: One Man's U. S. A.,' Pageant, April 1958, pp. 24-5

'The Highway: Four Photographs by Robert Frank,' Current, November 1960, p. 33

Robert Frank, The Lines of My Hand (Lustrum), unpaginated

Jeff L. Rosenheim and Douglas Eklund, Unclassified: A Walker Evans Anthology, p. 86

Peter Weiermair, ed., Americans, 1940-2006—America: The Social Landscape from 1940 until 2006, Masterpieces of American Photography, p. 41

This photograph, on double-weight semi-glossy paper, is in generally excellent condition. In raking light, a small, very soft crease is visible in the right margin. On the reverse, 'RF.A.OI.036.17' and 'E.G' are written in an unidentified hand in pencil.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

The road and the automobile are central motifs that appear throughout The Americans.  This image, one of Frank’s most famous, shows a lone car on a straight road running through the vast open landscape of New Mexico.  In his introduction to The Americans, Jack Kerouac refers to Frank’s ‘Long shot of night road arrowing forlorn into immensities and flat of impossible-to-believe America.’  Although Kerouac, and many others, assumed that this photograph was taken at night, it was instead made using the cinematic technique known as ‘day for night,’ and in French, la nuit américaine.  Frank photographed the scene in daylight, but drastically underexposed the negative, yielding the impression of a moon-lit landscape in the finished print. 

“The simple picture of a highway is an instance of Frank’s style, which is one of the few clear cut signatures possessed by any of the younger photographers. In this picture, instantly you find the continent. The whole page is haunted with American scale and space”  Walker Evans