Fire Below—to the East America, Mabou
Robert Frank
American, born Switzerland.1924–2019
1979
A gelatin silver print arranged as a six‑photo sequence in which Robert Frank repeatedly places an empty wooden picture frame in snowy coastal scenes to turn ordinary views and solitary figures into a fragmented, diaristic meditation on memory and place.
What hits you first is the insistence of the empty frame — tilted, upright, or held — slicing the landscape into small tableaux (house, shoreline, suitcase, lone people) while handwritten words like “YESTERDAY” and “To the East America” give the cold, pared‑down images a personal, melancholic voice.
By using the frame as a recurring device and combining sequence, text, and staged interventions in real places, Frank moves documentary photography toward a more subjective, narrative and conceptual practice that helped open up new ways of depicting travel, dislocation, and American identity.
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Dimensions
19 3/16 × 22 13/16" (48.8 × 57.9 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Acquired by exchange with the artist
Accession
272.2003
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
