Drug Store, Detroit

This study of workers and customers at a lunch counter in a Detroit, Michigan drugstore is a classic example of Robert Frank’s beat driven, two year (1955–57), Guggenheim funded road trip from New York to California and back again. While in Detroit, Frank made photographs of workers assembling cars at the massive Ford Motor Company factory, and others enjoying themselves lounging in local parks between parked cars, at drive-in movie theaters, and at this lunch counter. Frank noted, “Sitting around in the drugstore. I remember often going into Woolworth's. I photographed a lot… I'd get a Coke… Normally when I came to a town, it was the first place I went to. For some reason I found it very heartening.” Frank discovered that Detroit was particularly ripe for his camera. Nine of the eighty-three photographs in The Americans were made in the city, more than in any other locale.