Canal Street - New Orleans, 1955

When Frank was editing the hundreds of photographs from his Guggenheim Fellowship and sequencing them for The Americans he would keep two of the best images together if they were from the same strip of negatives. Canal Street - New Orleans "happens to be on the same strip of film as Trolley - New Orleans [Lot 16]. It is a reverse angle shot of people walking by on the sidewalk. Although made in the same place at the same time it is a complete contrast. There is a cross-section of people, old, young, black, white, tall, short. They are all mixed together and walking in opposite directions, all apparently oblivious to the photographer and to one another. There is nothing in the picture that separates one person from another. Throughout the book, just as within Trolley - New Orleans, Frank juxtaposes images that are radically different in form and feeling." (Stuart Alexander, Robert Frank, in Haworth-Booth, ed., The Folio Society Book of the 100 Greatest Photographs, The Folio Society, 2006, p. 158)

The presence of Grace Mayer's handwriting on the back of this print indicate that it was at the Museum of Modern Art in New York at the beginning of 1962 when Frank had a retrospective exhibition there. This image was represented in the exhibition by an extra-large print.