Balloons, France
1950
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
image: 5.2 x 8 cm (2 1/16 x 3 1/8 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift from the Estate of Kazuko Oshima
Accession Number
2010.108.19
Art Historical Context
Robert Frank's *Balloons, France (1950) is a poignant gelatin silver print capturing a fleeting moment of postwar whimsy in Europe. Measuring just 5.2 x 8 cm, this image exemplifies Frank's early mastery of street photography, where everyday scenes reveal deeper human truths. Shot during a period when Frank, a Swiss-born photographer who had recently immigrated to the United States was traveling back across the Atlantic, it predates his landmark book *The Americans* (1958), which revolutionized documentary photography with its raw, unvarnished gaze on society. The gelatin silver print medium,...
About the Artist
Robert Frank
Robert Frank (1924-2019) was a Swiss-American photographer and documentary filmmaker whose revolutionary approach to documentary photography fundamentally transformed the medium and influenced generations of artists. Born in Zurich, Switzerland, on November 9, 1924, to a middle-class Jewish family, Frank began his photographic apprenticeship in 1941, working with commercial photographers before im...