Guggenheim 508--General Motors Motorama, Los Angeles 1956

Robert Frank made Guggenheim 508, a strip of celluloid film, at the General Motors Motorama in Los Angeles. The film roll becomes the artwork, complete with sprocket holes and the information printed along the edges of the film. The pictures are small, but they show what was there, people dressed up to see cars. Look closely at the strip highlighted in orange. It gives you the flavor of the time; the black and white makes it feel distant, documentary. There’s a lot of information crammed into these small frames, kind of like a visual diary. It reminds me of Ed Ruscha’s photo books, where he just documented everything. This feels like Frank’s version, but with more people, more life. It makes you wonder what they were all thinking as they looked at those shiny new cars. Was it a good time for them? Art can be that way, just a moment captured, open for endless questions and never any easy answers.