Guggenheim 611--Westlake, California c. 1956

Robert Frank made this photographic work, Guggenheim 611--Westlake, California, using black and white film, somewhere around 1961. What strikes me first is the grid, the matrix of images that together suggest a narrative, but it’s a narrative with gaps. I see Westlake, California, through Frank’s eyes, and it's a place of repetition and slight variation. The texture of the film, the graininess, gives the work a feeling of immediacy, as if we’re looking at contact sheets straight from the darkroom. The orange or red marks around the frames aren't concealed; they are included as part of the process, even becoming part of the story. Look at the top row, the frame highlighted in red. It contains the clearest image of the road and the cars moving along it. Frank is like Walker Evans, in the sense that they both sought out the overlooked aspects of American life. You get the feeling that he is inviting us to find beauty in the mundane, and to reconsider our perceptions of the everyday. It's a testament to the power of art, which lies in its ability to encourage multiple interpretations rather than definitive answers.