Frank was born in Switzerland, in 1924, to a Swiss mother and a German-Jewish father. His family remained safe throughout the Second World War, but he became part of the postwar exodus from Europe, departing in 1947 for New York, where he settled; later in life, he began dividing his time between Manhattan and Nova Scotia. His early magazine work, in Harper’s Bazaar, gained him a reputation in New York arts circles, but it wasn’t until 1955, when he undertook the work that became “The Americans,” that his capacity as a photographer and a chronicler became widely apparent. Frank evolved as an artist, eventually turning to film and directing—most notably “Cocksucker Blues,” a cinematic record of the Rolling Stones’ 1972 U.S. tour, which became the subject of a protracted lawsuit. (The Stones attempted to suppress the film, partially out of fear over how its illicit contents would be received in the United States. On Tuesday, the band put out a statement calling Frank “an incredible artist whose unique style broke the mould.”) But “The Americans” remained Frank’s best-known work, a reference point for both him as an artist and the medium in which he created it.

“Butte, Montana,” from “The Americans,” 1956. Photograph by © Robert Frank / Courtesy Pace/MacGill

It’s often difficult to gauge the importance of a work long after its initial appearance, because the groundbreaking ideas of one generation tend to become the accepted conventions of those that follow it. “The Americans,” however, was compelling as a contemporary document when it was released, and it remains so as an archival representation six decades later. The eighty-three photographs in the book were culled from more than twenty-seven thousand that Frank took in Nebraska, Montana, Connecticut, South Carolina, Georgia, New York, California, and various points in between. The original cover features a gracefully composed image of a trolley car in New Orleans, the passengers gazing directly out, as if deliberately holding eye contact with the viewer. It is a document of a mid-century American conveyance, but also a subtle testament to much more. The implications of the arrangement of those passengers—the black travellers are seated in the back—and the trolley’s metaphorical depiction of an entire set of social relations are simply hinted at. Frank succinctly, subversively places all these people, who are literally heading in the same direction, under the title line of the book. They are the Americans.

“Political Rally—Chicago,“ from “The Americans,” 1956. Photograph by © Robert Frank / Courtesy Pace/MacGill

The array of moments that Frank captured and presented is a statement on the broad, unwieldy idea of America itself: a lone Jehovah’s Witness standing in Los Angeles, his face weathered and intense; a Miami dowager mid-conversation, a stole draped casually about her shoulders; a woman and child in a packed car in Butte, Montana, both so weary and concerned that they seem like real-life Joads, heading off in pursuit of better fortune. The American flag appears randomly in the series, affixed to a building during a parade in Hoboken, New Jersey; at a Fourth of July celebration in Jay, New York; in a bar in Detroit. A man in Venice, California, fashions one into a canopy, to shelter himself from the sun. The motif points to the varied undertakings here, the staggering diversity of lives coexisting in forty-eight contiguous states.