The show comprises 53 glorious vintage gelatin silver prints of many of the icons of the era, including Diane Arbus’s “Identical Twins, Roselle, N.J.,” “Boy with a Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park,” and “Jewish Giant at Home with his Parents in the Bronx”; Robert Frank’s “Trolley, New Orleans,” “Parade, Hoboken,” and “Chicago (Man with Tuba)”; and Irving Penn’s “Mountain Children, Cuzco, Peru,” “Chimney Sweep, London,” and “Running Children, Rabat, Morocco.” 

The Irving Penns in this exhibit all date from the seminal period in his career 1948-51, and cover his three most important series from those years: the “small trades,” the “big nudes,” and the confrontational portraits of the diminutive yet fierce mountain-top residents of Cuzco, Peru.

The Robert Franks date from 1947-58 and feature some of the key works reproduced in The Americans, arguably the most influential photography book of the 20th century. Frank’s sly lens captured the incipient fissures of Eisenhower-era America across several fault lines, racial, generational, urban/rural, that were to explode in the decade to follow.

The Diane Arbus photos date from 1961-70 and include her most celebrated portraits. Arbus's photographs merged Frank’s unblinking socially-conscious lens with a piercing psychological approach akin to Penn’s Cuzco work which stands as a vision all her own.