val in New York in 1946 Frank found work with
Harper’sandJunior Bazaar.AfterHarper’sclosed
its doors a year later he left New York and traveled
through the Americas to Peru and Bolivia before
returning to Europe in 1949. For the next five years
he continued to travel between Europe and the
United States and published his stunning yet som-
ber collection of images in the book Black and
White Things.
The postwar photographic era perhaps culminated
in Robert Frank’s landmark project—The Americans
(1959). This is probably the most influential single
photo book published between 1945 and 1959. Hav-
ing begrudgingly returned to the United States in
1953, Frank spent the years 1955–1956 traveling
across America on a Guggenheim Fellowship, cap-
turing scenes that revealed an America driven by
racial conflict, politics, loneliness, and boredom.
Usinga35-mmmanualLeicaheshot500rollsof
film, which unfold for us his version and vision of
America in the 1950s. His images are of public space
and public life—streets, post offices, Woolworth’s,
cafes, small hotels, bus stations, parks, hospitals,
elevators, diners, and gambling casinos. His subject
matter runs the gamut from 4th of July picnics to
cowboys to interstate highways. Even the design of
the text was somewhat revolutionary. Reflecting
Walker Evans’s book American Photography,
Frank’s book was sparse and the photographs were
only printed on the right-hand side of the pages. The
left-hand side was blank except for the page numbers.
Thus, from Frank we get a vision of a foreigner’s
response to his adopted country that is a kind of
‘‘anguished visual poetry rather than graphic art.’’
Jack Kerouac, author ofOn the Road, wrote in the
introduction to the book ‘‘he sucked a sad poem right
out of America onto film, taking rank among the
tragic poets of the world.’’ Frank is merely a ‘‘poetic’’
observer whose photographs revel in the voyeuristic
rather than participatory pleasure of the image. It
was not just his choice of subject but his unique
style that included closely cropped scenes, that also
draws the eye. In addition, Frank is known for fre-
quently photographing directly into the glare of the
light, and often framed his subjects off-center or on a
tilted horizon. This skewed sense of balance along
with his use of the small, handheld 35-mm camera
greatly influenced the way that photographers
worked from that time on. Thus, Frank deliberately
breaks the rules of ‘‘good’’ photography. Yet in
doing so he also closes off a great and productive
era in postwar photography but, more importantly,
looks ahead to the 1960s and 1970s in which photo-
graphers such as Richard Avedon, Diane Arbus, and
Garry Winogrand will carry on his tradition in their
own vision.
In Europe, the important groupfotoformbecame
the nucleus of 1950s modernism; Peter Keetman,
Otto Steinert, and others showed both the continuity
and disruption with the previous photographic
styles, especially in Germany. ‘‘Subjektive Fotogra-
fie,’’ a style that focused on abstraction, design, and
close observation was emerging, codified in a series
of three exhibitions in the early 1950s.
Around the world, in Japan, which had its own
postwar era, but also in countries not directly
affected by the World War, there was a general
boom in photography as societies increasingly mod-
ernized and standards of living increased. Japan’s
postwar photographers, including Ken Domon,
Hiroshi Hamaya, Kikuji Kawada (whose famous
black and white picture of the Japanese flag, laying
on the ground, soaked and wrinkled, is a symbol of
an essential part of Japanese reconciliation with
their war years), Shomei Tomatsu, and others
reflected the introspection and independence that
characterized western photographers. Photojourn-
alism and social depiction predominated as Japan’s
postwar photographers dealt with the aftermath of
their defeat and the devastating physical and psy-
chological consequences of the atomic bombs
dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
In the USSR and countries under communist
rule, policies dictating ‘‘official’’ styles constrained
photographic innovation even as they codified
photographic genres such as Socialist Realism.
StephenieYoung
Seealso:Adams, Ansel; Arbus, Diane; Bourke-White,
Margaret; Brandt, Bill; Callahan, Harry; Capa,
Robert; Cartier-Bresson, Henri; DeCarava, Roy; Dois-
neau, Robert; Domon, Ken; Frank, Robert; Hamaya,
Hiroshi; History of Photography: Interwar Years; Insti-
tute of Design; Kawada, Kikuji; Keetman, Peter; Klein,
William; Levitt, Helen; Life Magazine; Magnum
Photos; Museum of Modern Art; Newhall, Beaumont;
Penn, Irving; Siskind, Aaron; Socialist Photography;
‘‘The Decisive Moment’’; Ulmann, Doris; War Photo-
graphy; Weegee; White, Minor; Winogrand, GarryFurther Reading
Barth, Miles.Weegee’s World. New York: Bulfinch Press,
1997.
Frank, Robert.The Americans, 1959. New York: Pantheon,
1986.
Frank, Robert, Sarah Greenough, Philip Brookman, Mar-
tin Gasser.Robert Frank: Moving Out, Washington:
National Gallery of Art, 1994.HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY: POSTWAR ERA