Guggenheim 688--Butte, Montana 1956

This is Robert Frank's photo contact sheet, 'Guggenheim 688--Butte, Montana' and it's like peeking into the artist's mind. Imagine Frank there in Montana, clicking away, trying to capture something about this place. What does it feel like to try and fail to capture a place, and how does that feel like success? It’s got these strips of images, a whole sequence of looking, the world chopped up into little rectangles. The red marks are interesting, right? He’s circled some frames, the ones that grabbed him. A guy with a horse, traffic lights, maybe some buildings. I wonder why those? What did he see in them? It’s like he’s editing his own thoughts, trying to make sense of what he saw. You can see that Frank is in dialogue with other photographers like Walker Evans, opening up new ways of seeing that are intimate, personal, and immediate. Photography is like painting—it’s about trying to pin down a feeling, a moment, and trying again, failing again, until you find the thing you didn’t even know you were looking for.