Robert Frank knew how to focus a viewer’s eyes on lives outside the frame of the national picture. It was an approach to photography, art and cultural criticism that was both proudly American and distinctively Jewish — to embrace a new homeland by becoming one of its fiercest critics .

Mr. Frank, who died on Monday at the age of 94, came to the United States as an artist and a refugee. Born to a Jewish family in Zurich in 1924, he was 9 years old when the Nazis came to power in Germany. Even in neutral Switzerland, his family was aware that their safety was precarious. A budding artistic talent, Mr. Frank was drawn to the freedom and creative promise of America.

When he arrived in New York in 1947, the country was basking in its postwar triumph and prosperity, convinced of the need to spread its liberal ideas worldwide. Mr. Frank came prepared both to embrace and to challenge the values of his new homeland.

“I looked at poor people, how they tried to survive, what a lonely time it can be in America, and what a tough country it is,” Mr. Frank said. “But it didn’t make me hate America; it made me understand how people can be."