Robert Frank
1955
Hoover Dam

Gelatin silver print
18 3/16 x 12 3/16 ins
 
Source requested
© Robert Frank
 
Under a blazing Nevada sun, Robert Frank's amalgam of pictures brought together the natural, rough, wild canyons of the Colorado River, the smooth, artificial, restraining container of the Hoover Dam, and the terror of an atomic mushroom cloud, producing a 1950s allegory of the past, present, and future. Frank's vision of the atomic era can be understood in the statement: "Black and white is the vision of hope and despair. This is what I want in my photographs."
 
Robert Frank quoted in Sarah Greenough, Philip Brookman, et al., Robert Frank: Moving Out (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1994), 54.
 
LL/33306