Untitled, London

Recalling his 1951–52 trip to England nearly 50 years later, Robert Frank wrote that “London was black, white, and gray, the elegance, the style, all present in front of always changing fog.” Here, through the city’s exquisite yet gloomy fog, Frank captured the cheerful demeanor of a service worker amid a sea of luxury automobiles, drivers awaiting the wealthy financiers who employ them. A frequent outsider to the places he photographed, Frank used his critical distance to explore disparities of class and background—a theme that would reappear a few years later in The Americans, his seminal publication based on a photographic road trip across the United States.