Guggenheim 608--Daly City and Westlake, California c. 1956

This is Robert Frank's contact sheet, Guggenheim 608--Daly City and Westlake, California. It’s a small black and white photograph, a window into his process. It shows his decisions, what he chose to focus on in this new tract housing and suburban landscape. The texture is inherent to the photographic medium. We see light and shadow, tonality and contrast, like the stark differences between the houses and the hills in the background. Frank crops in tight, or pulls back to the wider vista. The red marks that encircle particular frames create a conversation around the work that reveals what he felt was important, or what could be left behind. It reminds me of Ed Ruscha's photographic books, like "Every Building on the Sunset Strip." Both artists are documenting the American landscape, but in radically different ways. Frank is capturing the emotional truth of the everyday, while Ruscha is interested in the banal, the serial, the deadpan. It's like Frank is inviting us into his darkroom, while Ruscha is handing us a map. Art is always about looking, deciding and choosing.