Picturing America

Three people in 1950s New York

New York, by Robert Frank, negative 1955-56
Courtesy of the Addison Gallery of American Art

Robert Frank photograph of partially obscured people looking out of windows behind a large American flag

Parade, Hoboken, New Jersey, Robert Frank, negative 1955-56

Courtesy of the Addison Gallery of American Art

Given the current national crises, The Americans, the 1958 book by Robert Frank, is an especially timely document. The Swiss photographer captured a culture in transition: activists and opponents squaring off within a changing racial landscape, people more openly expressing themselves while challenging social norms. New York and Parade, Hoboken, New Jersey are among those on display in “Robert Frank: The Americans” at Andover’s Addison Gallery of American Art through April 11. In one sense, it took an outsider, the exhibit notes, to probe “the defining and enduring dualities of American life and culture—hope and despair, affluence and want, freedom and limitation, community and isolation.”

Click here for the January-February 2021 issue table of contents

Read more articles by Nell Porter-Brown

You might also like

Sister Acts and Cyanotypes

Julia Rooney’s paintings cross the analog-digital divide.

Pony Plunges

Scrapbooking a woman who rode horses into the sea

Rendering Dreams in Art

South Korean artist’s socially themed photographs at the Peabody Essex Museum

Most popular

House Committee Subpoenas Harvard Over Tuition Costs

The University must turn over all requested materials related to tuition and financial aid by mid-July. 

The Power of Patience

Teaching students the value of deceleration and immersive attention

The Professor Who Quantified Democracy

Erica Chenoweth’s data shows how—and when—authoritarians fall.

Explore More From Current Issue