[Men Talking Aboard the Congressional Limited]

Robert Frank

1955 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

In 1955, while working as a special photography editor at Fortune magazine, Walker Evans commissioned Frank to produce a series of photographs for an article on the Pennsylvania Rail Road's elegant afternoon train, The Congressional, which ran express from New York to Washington, D.C. Frank primarily trained his camera on businessmen and politicians drinking in the train's lounge and getting shoeshines. The project marks the start of the artist's two-year journey across the country on a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. The result was the book The Americans (1958-59), a beat-inflected homage to America's unexamined rituals and customs from television and jukeboxes to Cadillac showrooms, river baptisms, and barber shops. Here, the subject is a rare glimpse of one of the inner sancta of America's power elite.

Artist

Robert Frank

Date

1955

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Harris Brisbane Dick and Dodge Funds, 2001