Detroit 1955

Curator: This is "Detroit," a gelatin silver print by Robert Frank, taken in 1955. It captures a fleeting moment—two individuals in a car, seemingly lost in their own thoughts. Editor: It's funny, the image strikes me as so melancholic. The heavy lid of the man's eye. You get the feeling that the motor city may be wearing heavy on these two passengers in this particular car. Curator: Absolutely. Frank had a way of distilling complex emotions into simple compositions. It was the height of the Civil Rights movement and Frank himself saw it, travelling around America at that time. Editor: That's something else. The historical context, like the elephant in the room. You have to imagine what it was like for the Black families of Detroit at the time. You see their cars filled with just themselves. But you never see them mingling or chatting with white people in cars on Frank's trip across America. The road was open to very few Americans. Curator: Frank captures something beyond just documentation, and it's a subtle choice with those high contrasts. Look at the whiteness of the car and the men, even in this grayscale shot, framed against those darkened interiors. You see it repeated time and again throughout The Americans. Editor: I find myself wondering what those unspoken realities in postwar American society can tell us now. I love the challenge and it really pulls at the idea that art can be so explicitly connected to power. Curator: Yeah, these aren’t simple snapshots. They're complex, layered observations, even though at first glance they appear to be completely off-the-cuff. This piece captures such a stillness, that contemplative pause. It asks the viewer to lean in close. Editor: Which is exactly what good art is meant to do, isn't it? Curator: Precisely. Thank you. Editor: Thanks.