New York and the American Flag draws together photographer David Hurn's images of the Stars and Stripes as he encountered the flag on the streets, in shop windows, on building sites and at parades during his visits to New York. The Welsh photographer and long-standing Magnum member used the recurring motif as a way of looking at the city and at the United States itself—the flag appearing variously as a marker of patriotism, a piece of decor, a fragment of advertising, a draped backdrop, a piece of clothing or simply incidental graphic shape. Across the sequence the flag shifts in scale and meaning, sometimes dominating the frame, sometimes glimpsed in passing; the people around it lend it new accents—pride, indifference, humour, occasionally unease. Hurn's understated framing and his sympathy for the people he photographs allow the project to function as both an affectionate portrait of a city and a quiet meditation on national symbol-making, on how a piece of cloth carries the weight of an idea about a country.