Boots in road--Casper, Wyoming 1956

Robert Frank made this gelatin silver print, "Boots in road—Casper, Wyoming," as part of his project to capture America on the move. Frank, a Swiss immigrant, received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1955 to travel across the United States and photograph what he saw. The resulting images formed his seminal book, *The Americans*. Here, in Wyoming, he focuses on the detritus of that movement: discarded boots on a desolate road, perhaps hinting at the failed promise of the West. The image embodies a tension between the open road's promise of freedom and the stark reality of abandonment. Frank challenged the norms of documentary photography at the time, which tended towards more heroic or picturesque images. Instead, he presented a raw and often unflattering view of American life. By capturing the mundane and the overlooked, he invited viewers to question the prevailing myths of progress and prosperity. To better understand Frank's project, explore publications about the Guggenheim Fellowship's history or the evolution of photography as a tool for social commentary.