America as Found Object

Magnum Photos has always treated America as a place that reveals itself sideways—in the backseat of a car, through a screen door, on the face of someone who doesn’t know they’re being watched. "Postcards From America" brought together work from across the cooperative’s archive: photographers who understood that the country’s vastness is best described in miniature, a diner, a motel corridor, a highway that ends nowhere in particular. Robert Frank did it first and nobody’s really done it better, but Magnum’s answer is to keep trying, collectively, and the results are usually worth the effort.