Restaurant – U.S. 1 leaving Columbia, South Carolina

Robert Frank American, born Switzerland

Not on view

This study of a roadside cafe in South Carolina features Oral Roberts, the famous American televangelist, preaching the Gospel on television to an otherwise empty room. It is one of eighty-three photographs in The Americans (1958), Robert Frank’s landmark book that directly explored the many anxieties lurking beneath the country’s seeming prosperity ten years after the end of the Great Depression and World War II. Frank focused his camera on racial segregation, on the developing hostility between the youth culture and the status quo, on rural loneliness and urban angst, and, as shown here, on the many cultural changes wrought by the nascent television culture.

Restaurant – U.S. 1 leaving Columbia, South Carolina, Robert Frank (American (born Switzerland), Zurich 1924–2019 Inverness, Nova Scotia), Gelatin silver print

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