Bar—Detroit
1955
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
image: 31.8 × 47.5 cm (12 1/2 × 18 11/16 in.) sheet: 40.5 × 50.5 cm (15 15/16 × 19 7/8 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Dr. J. Patrick and Patricia A. Kennedy, in Honor of the 25th Anniversary of Photography at the National Gallery of Art
Accession Number
2014.155.5
Art Historical Context
Step into the gritty pulse of mid-1950s America with *Bar—Detroit* (1955), a silver print by Swiss-born photographer Robert Frank.ured during his transformative cross-country road trip, this image exemplifies Frank's raw, unflinching documentary style, which challenged the polished optimism of postwar United States. At 31.8 × 47.5 cm, the print's intimate scale draws viewers close to the dimly lit bar scene, evoking the hum of urban nightlife in industrial Detroit—a hub of automotive might and working-class resilience. Frank's mastery of gelatin silver printing shines here, yielding deep blac...
About the Artist
Robert Frank
Robert Frank (1924-2019) was a Swiss-American photographer and documentary filmmaker whose revolutionary approach to documentary photography fundamentally transformed the medium and influenced generations of artists. Born in Zurich, Switzerland, on November 9, 1924, to a middle-class Jewish family, Frank began his photographic apprenticeship in 1941, working with commercial photographers before im...