During an extended road trip across the United States, Robert Frank pointed his camera lens at a passing trolley in New Orleans, took a single exposure, and then turned back to bustling Canal Street, where crowds of people swarmed the sidewalks. That single click of the shutter produced a picture with enduring clarity: a row of windows framing the streetcar's passengers--white passengers in the front, Black passengers in the back. An essay by curator Lucy Gallun explores images in the context of Frank's photobook The Americans and in relation to other photographs of the 1950s and '60s.
