Obituaries in The New York Times give account of the lives of the people around us — what they accomplished and how they lived — and reading them can be an exercise in discovering, or rediscovering, the marvelous things they created.

Here is a sampling of obituaries from recent weeks showcasing the legacies of visual artists.

A New Photography

Robert Frank changed the path of documentary photography in the United States with the publication of “The Americans,” a collection of pictures he produced during journeys across the country in the mid-1950s. Jack Kerouac wrote the introduction for this visual road trip through the nation’s consciousness.