Nixon campaign 24 1960

Robert Frank's photographic contact sheet, simply titled Nixon campaign 24, captures a series of images. There’s a loose, process-oriented feel to the work. The multiple frames show an intuitive approach, recording many perspectives of the event. The texture of the film is really present. You see the grain, the scratches, and the raw edges of the film strip. It’s not cleaned up or slick; it's presented as is. The red pencil markings framing certain images point our eye, suggesting a path. And at the bottom, the flags are ghostly, blurred, almost like a memory or an afterthought. In isolation, this series of flags implies critique through the formal language of photography. Frank's work here reminds me of the kind of bluntness and immediacy you find in the work of photographers like Garry Winogrand, who were also on the streets capturing America as they saw it. But Frank, with his background and outsider perspective, brings a different kind of edge, a poetic ambiguity, to these glimpses of power.