Walter Gutman and Sugar Candy 2 c. 1959

This is Robert Frank’s Walter Gutman and Sugar Candy 2, a black and white photograph on film, and I see it as a kind of a storyboard. I’m thinking about Frank with his camera, circling around these figures. It’s like he is trying to figure out a way to frame them. He is searching for the right shot, the right angle. It must have been a dance. I love how he leaves the trace of his process here. He is going around and around until he has something he is happy with. There is no cropping, no editing – it’s all there on the film roll. It makes me think about other photographs and other art. It’s all about that process of circling around to find the right mark. That’s what art is. It’s just people figuring things out, and leaving the trace of their process for us to see and for other artists to respond to.