Robert Frank kicked documentary photography into the present with a loud clang. In place of the detached formalism of Walker Evans and the poetic lyricism of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Andre Kertesz, he brought a moody, cool intensity that stamped his pictures with a readily identifiable hallmark. Using a 35-millimeter Leica, he could compose images as elegantly framed as if he’d set up a tripod, or as blurry and off-center as an amateur snapshot. He took whatever means he needed to express a vision that was alternately empathetic and obstreperous, as contradictory as the man himself.

Before Mr. Frank, documentary photographers didn’t necessarily attempt to be objective — like Dorothea Lange or Russell Lee, they were often advancing a political agenda. But when the Swiss-born Mr. Frank, supported by a Guggenheim fellowship, took the road trips across the United States in 1955 and 1956 that resulted in his groundbreaking book, “The Americans,” he wasn’t so much depicting his newly adopted country as he was recording his reactions to it. This personally expressive style of documentary photography was something new.