London

“London was black, white, and gray, the elegance, the style, all present in front of always changing fog.” Swiss-born photographer Robert Frank wrote this description of his 1951 trip to England over 50 years later, recalling the paradoxes he captured in his photographic study of bankers in London’s financial district. Impeccably dressed and walking purposefully toward their next destination, the subjects of this photograph seem out of place in their gritty, gloomy surroundings. Frank’s ability to depict the unexpected—and often less than glamorous—subtleties of a particular scene would become one of his greatest talents. Four years after his London visit, Frank received a Guggenheim Fellowship to travel across the United States while pursuing an outsider’s vision of this nation and its inhabitants. The photographs appeared in Frank’s seminal publication, The Americans, drawing both enthusiastic praise and bitter criticism.