New York and the American Flag

RRB Photobooks is delighted to announce New York and the American Flag by David Hurn. The photographs in this new book span more than 50 years and depict the ubiquitous symbol of the American flag as encountered on the streets of New York. The previously unpublished photographs by David Hurn were taken across three visits to the US in 1962, 2007 and 2017 and show the potent symbol of American identity both revered and reduced to the mundane. 

Hurn first visited New York in 1962, on the advice of Bruce Davidson, and spent his days photographing the streets while waiting for appointments, unwittingly building a portfolio of the city. Decades later, while browsing his contact sheets, he noticed how many of those images featured the American flag and realised that, if he returned and photographed more, he could trace the changing feel of New York over time. This book is the result. Working first in black and white and later in colour, he records the flag as part of everyday life, sometimes prominent, sometimes peripheral, and at times proud, worn, commercialised, or ambiguous.

‘The flag is not neutral; it has flown over liberation and oppression alike. It has reached across classes and regions, across political parties and generations. It has been stitched into schoolrooms, military funerals, protest marches, baseball games and front porches. It touches a lot of nerves: it means something to almost everyone.’

Rudi Thoemmes from the book’s essay.

The American flag was first adopted in 1777 during the Revolutionary War as a banner for a new, experimental republic and over time it has accumulated many layers of meaning. In the nineteenth century it came to stand for the survival of the Union through civil war. By the early twentieth century it had moved into schools, parades and public rituals; the Pledge of Allegiance helped fix it in daily civic life, and during the World Wars it became a symbol of national unity and sacrifice. In the 1960s and 1970s, however, the flag became an emblem of protest around civil rights and the Vietnam War. In the twenty‑first century the flag has remained central but more polarised, used in everything from public mourning after 9/11 to sharply coded political displays, with different versions and contexts signalling contrasting beliefs.

Hurn often works across decades, and many of his most significant bodies of work, including his most recent publication On Reading, have unfolded over years rather than weeks. This book follows the same pattern. The American flag was not pursued as a project so much as noticed, returned to and slowly gathered through years of visiting New York, a patience that gives the work its resonance.

David Hurn (b.1934) is a self-taught Welsh photographer and full member of Magnum Photos. He began his career in 1955 at the Reflex Agency and first made his name covering the 1956 Hungarian revolution, before working as a special photographer on films including A Hard Day's Night and From Russia with Love. In 1973 he founded the School of Documentary Photography in Newport, Wales, and in 1997 co-authored the widely read textbook On Being a Photographer with Professor Bill Jay. His book Wales: Land of My Father (Thames and Hudson, 2000) remains a landmark of British documentary photography. In 2016, Hurn was awarded an honorary fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society, and in 2020, he was the recipient of a Lucie Award for Achievement in Documentary.

Rudi Thoemmes is a bookseller and publisher with a particular interest in photobooks and the history of photography.

Softcover book accompanied by one 7x5" black and white & one 7x5" colour pigment print

Book and prints signed