20世纪50年代，美国种族隔离政策在新奥尔良的永恒一瞥

在一次横跨美国的长途公路旅行中，罗伯特•弗兰克将镜头从熙熙攘攘的新奥尔良运河街移开，对准了一辆路过的电车，然后按下了快门。这一次曝光拍出了一张清晰度持久的照片：一排窗户框住了街车的乘客——前面坐着白人乘客，后面坐着黑人乘客。MoMA策展人Lucy Gallun的一篇文章叙述了这张照片如何在今天的新环境中产生回响。

An abiding image of American racial segregation from 1950s New Orleans

In the midst of an extended road trip across the United States, Robert Frank turned from bustling Canal Street, New Orleans, where crowds of people swarmed the sidewalks, pointed his camera lens at a passing trolley, and clicked the shutter. That single exposure produced a picture with enduring clarity: a row of windows framing the street car’s passengers—white passengers in the front, black passengers in the back.

Frank captured individual faces gazing from each rectangular frame, from the weary Black man in his work shirt to the young white girl just in front of him, her hand resting on the wooden sign that designated areas segregated by race. In 1958, he wrote: “With these photographs, I have attempted to show a cross-section of the American population. My effort was to express it simply and without confusion.” By the time The Americans was published in the United States in 1959, with this image now appearing on its front cover, New Orleans streetcars and buses had been desegregated through a 1958 court order. But Jim Crow was still in full swing, the 1960s Civil Rights struggles still ahead. An essay by MoMA curator Lucy Gallun conveys how this image reverberates in new contexts today.