Street scene--Chattanooga, Tennessee
1955
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
sheet: 25.3 x 20.3 cm (9 15/16 x 8 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Robert Frank Collection, Gift of Robert Frank
Accession Number
1990.28.394
Art Historical Context
**Street Scene—Chattanooga, Tennessee** (1955) is a poignant gelatin silver print by Swiss-born photographer Robert Frank, capturing the everyday rhythms of mid-20th-century America. Measuring 25.3 x 20.3 cm, this intimate black-and-white image hails from Frank's transformative Guggenheim Fellowship road trip across the United States in 1955–56, which produced his landmark book *The Americans* (1959). In Chattanooga, Tennessee—a bustling Southern industrial hub—Frank turned his lens on ordinary street life, revealing the textures of post-World War II society amid economic shifts and social ten...
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...