Guggenheim 581--San Francisco c. 1956

This is Robert Frank’s ‘Guggenheim 581--San Francisco,’ a photographic contact sheet. Look at how the artist has arranged the image strips. I imagine him in the darkroom, editing, thinking. A Motel sign, a car, a statue, graveyards. What does he want to show? There's a sense of motion, a road trip maybe? The film is a series of frames, capturing moments in time. A single frame can only capture so much. It's a process of selecting what to keep and what to discard. Painters do that too. We layer, erase, paint over. The white canvas is like the open road. Each mark is a decision. Where to go next? What to leave behind? Photography and painting. Both ways of seeing. Both ways of feeling. Both ongoing conversations.