Bullfight--Spain 2 1952

This is Robert Frank's 'Bullfight--Spain 2', and it's a contact sheet of images made sometime in the middle of the last century. Looking at this sheet, I think about the darkroom as a site of inquiry, where these images emerge through the alchemy of chemistry and light. Frank was Swiss and traveled a lot in his early years. He was influenced by Edward Steichen, who included him in a show called "51 American Photographers." The contact sheet seems to suggest a story, fragments of a narrative, and a life in motion. There are interior scenes, men in beds, crowds in a town, and then, smack in the middle, there is the bullfight. The whole thing gives a powerful feeling of displacement. You can sense the artist's mind at work, thinking about what is seen, what is felt, and how the world changes our view of ourselves. It's an exchange of ideas across time, and it's an inspiration for other artists.