After crisscrossing the country in a used Ford in 1955
and 1956 as a Guggenheim fellow, the Swiss émigré Robert Frank returned to New York
City to organize his photographs into the highly influential book The
Americans, first published in France in 1958. He spent that summer riding
city buses and capturing impressions of New York and its inhabitants passing by
with a cinematic quality of movement that was new to his work. In fact, Frank would
soon set his still camera aside and devote the majority of his creative effort
to filmmaking.