Movie Premiere - Hollywood, 1956

Eloquent examples of Frank's overturning convention, such as the present lot, helped to earn his exalted place in the history of photography. At the premiere of The Man with the Golden Arm, Frank basically ignored Frank Sinatra, visible in the frame at the left (see fig.), and shifted his camera's focus from the main subject, the actress, to the adoring fans in the background. Rather than a glittering portrait of rising young starlet Kim Novak it has become a kind of generic Hollywood blonde's mask. In contrast with the sharply delineated fans it raises questions about the nature of fame, fantasy and illusion. Upon examination of the contact we learn that Frank cropped the horizontal negative to make a simpler, more concentrated vertical image - a clear rejection of the sacrosanct 'decisive moment', full-frame composition made popular earlier in the fifties by Henri Cartier-Bresson.