Cafeteria line worker--Los Angeles 1956

Robert Frank made this gelatin silver print, “Cafeteria line worker--Los Angeles”. The image is undated, but likely comes from the mid-1950s, when Frank traveled the US on a Guggenheim Fellowship. The image shows a woman working, presumably in a cafeteria. She is below a bank of lamps, her head bowed. The composition is stark and unflattering. The lighting is harsh. The scene is mundane. Frank’s image can be read against the narrative of this period, the postwar boom and the American dream, during which social conformity and consumerism were encouraged. The photograph is included in his book "The Americans". Frank’s work is an important example of how art can be used to challenge social norms and comment on the social structures of its own time. As historians, we can better understand this photograph by researching the social and economic conditions of the 1950s, as well as the history of photography as a documentary medium.