An America Divided

Cover of “The Americans” by Robert Frank, Grove Press (2nd Printing, 1969)

At The New York Times an interactive photographic portrait of a photographic portrait – this latter, from the legendary 1959 book The Americans by Robert Frank. The cover of that book is a startling image of a street car in segregated New Orleans taken by Frank during a road trip through the United States in 1955-57, and the NYT piece by Arthur Lubow uses that image as the impetus for an interpretation and a comparative study against other works of visual art – exploring racial and social division, hierarchy, symbolism. I don’t need to say how powerfully this rings, but should mention how unwelcome Frank’s “America” was to critics of the day. Here is a link to a working print of the “New Orleans Trolley-car” from the Robert Frank Collection at the National Gallery of Art – more generally, a great online resource for looking at Frank’s extensive work.