Cowboys VI 1954

Robert Frank’s ‘Cowboys VI’ is a photographic contact sheet. I love how Frank leaves the evidence of his process right there on the surface. The image is about the relationship between individual frames. Like a painter choosing colors, Frank has chosen particular moments to capture in each frame, each with its own texture and tone. Looking at the frames together, what I see is how one thing leads to another, how one picture begins the next. The black frame acts as an equalizing field of visual information. It is the element which binds the frames to a specific moment. These cowboys are an echo of something, shadows in the street; are they real or imagined? The way they are presented in this strip of film leaves space for the possibility of alternative readings. What Frank shows us, really, is that art is always a conversation.