City of London 1952

Robert Frank made this photograph in London using black and white film. It's a grainy, misty image, and the tonal range is mostly grayscale. I wonder what Frank was thinking when he made this? He was an outsider, an immigrant to the US, and I'm guessing he felt a similar alienation when photographing in London. Maybe he felt like he was walking amongst ghosts? You can almost feel the street grit under your shoes. The person in the foreground becomes a formal cipher. His back is turned to us, and we're left wondering what he might be thinking, where he might be going. The umbrella is a kind of hook that leads our eye through the image. It reminds me of the many painters, like Gerhard Richter, who work with photographs, blurring and cropping to achieve the desired effect. They’re all in dialogue.