Robert Frank

Trolley—New Orleans. 1955

MoMA. The Fellows of
Photography Fund, The
Family of Man Fund,and
Horace W. Goldsmith Fund
through Robert B. Menschel
In Focus: Robert Frank’s Trolley—New Orleans

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March 5, 2021
Lucy Gallun, Sarah Meister, and Sean Anderson
Installation view, Harry Callahan and Robert Frank, MoMA, January 30-April 1, 1962
Robert Frank
Trolley—New Orleans. 1955
MoMA. The Fellows of
Photography Fund, The
Family of Man Fund,and
Horace W. Goldsmith Fund
through Robert B. Menschel
Interior of a streetcar with race screens,
New Orleans. August 29, 1951
Robert Frank Robert Frank
Contact sheet from the portfolio Robert Frank: The Canal Street—New Orleans. 1955
Americans, 81 Contact Sheets. November 11, 1955 MoMA. Gift of Robert and Gayle Greenhill
MoMA. Gift of Peter and Susan MacGill
 The Americans
(New York: Grove,
1959), front and
back covers.
Front: Robert
Frank,
Trolley—New
Orleans. Back:
Les Américains (Paris: Delpire, 1958), jacket and pages 40–41. illustration by
Jacket illustration by Saul Steinberg Alfred Leslie
 Robert Frank
Charleston, South Carolina. 1955
MoMA. Gift of Robert and Gayle Greenhill
Robert Frank
San Francisco. 1955
 Robert Frank
En Route from New York to Washington, Club Car.
1954 or 1955
Port Gibson, Mississippi in Robert Frank’s The
Lines of My Hand (New York: Lustrum, 1972),
n.p. November 1955
The Movement: Documentary of a Struggle for Equality (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1964). Cover photograph: Danny Lyon, Atlanta,
Georgia—High school student Taylor Washington is arrested at
Lebs Delicatessen—His eighth arrest, 1963 or 1964
 Jacob Lawrence
Bus. 1941
Gordon Parks
Untitled, Nashville, Tennessee. 1956
Robert Frank
Trolley—New Orleans. 1955
MoMA. The Fellows of
Photography Fund, The
Family of Man Fund,and
Horace W. Goldsmith Fund
through Robert B. Menschel
Installation view
Mario Gooden
The Refusal of Space.
2020
Union Transportation Company streetcar
c. 1905
Design, creativity, and space-making have been key at
each moment of this continuous reconstruction. … Black
people have creatively appropriated various aspects of
the built environment and landscape to invent new uses,
programs, and forms of visibility. … [They] have moved
through space, negotiated the barriers of social,
political, and economic landscapes, and reformulated
spatial conditions through these very migrations and
displacements, improvising new ways of being.

—Mario Gooden
Robert Frank
Trolley—New Orleans. 1955
MoMA. The Fellows of
Photography Fund, The
Family of Man Fund,and
Horace W. Goldsmith Fund
through Robert B. Menschel
Appendix
Robert Frank Sit-in by members of the Congress for Racial Equality at Woolworth’s
Drugstore—Detroit. 1955 lunch counter, Canal Street, New Orleans, September 9, 1960
Photo: Ralph Uribe
Dan Weiner Dan Weiner
Bus Boycott, Montgomery, Alabama. 1956 Bus Boycott, Montgomery, Alabama. 1956
MoMA. Gift of Sandra Weiner
Robert Frank Lee Friedlander
Trolley—New Orleans. 1955 New Orleans, Louisiana. 1959
MoMA. The Fellows of Photography Fund, The Family of
Man Fund, and Horace W. Goldsmith Fund through
Robert B. Menschel
 Robert Frank
U.S. 91, Leaving Blackfoot, Idaho. 1956
Robert Frank
U.S. 90, En Route to Del Rio, Texas. 1955
MoMA. Purchase
Links & Resources Shared During the Session
● Robert Frank: Trolley—New Orleans by Lucy Gallun in the MoMA Store
● New online course: Reimagining Blackness and Architecture
● What Is Architecture? on MoMA Magazine
● Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America at MoMA
● Robert Frank on moma.org
● Tribute: Remembering Robert Frank, 1924–2019 on MoMA Magazine
● Review of The Americans on Lensculture
● Mario Gooden on The Refusal of Space
● Justin Garrett Moore on Architectures of Difference in Reimagining
Blackness and Architecture
● Rooftop City, 1954 by Saul Steinberg