This field trip took place on June 15, 2024. If you’re interested in the exhibit, check out the bonus material at the bottom of the article.

PHSNE is taking a field trip and you’re invited! On Saturday, June 15th at 1:00 P.M., PHSNE colleagues will gather at the Addison Gallery on the campus of Phillips Academy in Andover, MA. Together we will enjoy a self-guided tour of the exhibit, Robert Frank and Todd Webb Across America, 1955. Admission is free. Please sign up ahead of time here with your email and/or phone number.

The images in the exhibit provide photographic documentation of the concurrent, but very different, trips across America taken in 1955 by the iconic Robert Frank and the relatively unknown Todd Webb. While Frank motored across the country, Webb walked, boated, and biked. Their assignment, sponsored by Guggenheim grants, was to document both a vanishing way of life and what was replacing it.

Additional information about the exhibit, and directions to the Addison Gallery, can be found at https://addison.andover.edu/exhibition/robert-frank-and-todd-webb-across-america-1955/. The Addison website includes a video discussion by Lisa Volpe, Curator of Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, organizer of this exhibit.

Boston Globe reviewer Mark Feeney commented that side-by-side comparisons were unfair to Webb while remarking, ironically, that Webb was the better technical photographer. He writes, “It’s a matter of sensibility, intent, imagination. […] Webb’s photographs record or illustrate — Frank’s reveal or evoke — and challenge, himself no less than the viewer. Webb is curious, Frank possessed […]”. (https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/02/15/arts/road-with-robert-frank-todd-webb/).

A concurrent exhibit at the Addison, A Long Arc: Photography and the American South since 1845, “surveys an uneasy place in the history of photography as both an example of regional exceptionalism and as the crucible from which American identity has been forged.” Both exhibits run through July 31, 2024.

Bonus material

Whether or not you’re joining us for the field trip, check out these resources to learn more about the Frank and Webb exhibit.

• An episode of the B&H podcast about the exhibition with Lisa Volpe and Bill Shapiro: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/podcasts/photography/1950s-america-as-seen-by-robert-frank-todd-webb-with-lisa-volpe-bill-shapiro
• An episode of Yale University Press’s podcast about the exhibition and catalogue: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/2023/10/12/ep-121-the-1955-photographs-of-robert-frank-and-todd-webb/
• Recorded lecture from the exhibition’s opening at The Museum of Fine Arts Houston: https://vimeo.com/896276953
• Recorded zoom lecture presented at the exhibition’s opening at the Addison Gallery: https://addison.andover.edu/video-virtual-gallery-talk-with-the-exhibition-curator-robert-frank-and-todd-webb-across-america-1955/