Italy and Vienna--Early Europe 4 1949

Robert Frank made this photo, *Italy and Vienna—Early Europe 4*, using film to capture a series of moments. Look at these frames; they're like little windows into a story, or maybe several stories happening at once. I can imagine him, camera in hand, moving through the streets, noticing faces, gestures, scenes unfolding. What was he thinking? What caught his eye? The frame with some kind of symbol sprayed on the wall, it looks kinda like the Batman signal, but more homemade. It’s a bit scratchy and raw, like life, like Robert Frank's work itself. There’s a sense of immediacy in each shot, a feeling that Frank was right there, in the thick of it, capturing life as it happened. It reminds me of other street photographers, all those artists trying to grab a piece of reality and freeze it in time. It’s as if they're all in conversation, influencing each other, riffing off each other’s ideas. Painting, photography, they're just different ways of seeing, different ways of trying to make sense of the world.