Paris 60B 1951 - 1952

Robert Frank made this photographic work, Paris 60B, in, well, Paris! It’s a contact sheet, a kind of behind-the-scenes look at the photographic process. Frank's approach to photography feels raw and intuitive. He’s not trying to create a seamless illusion. Instead, you get the feeling of artmaking as an unfolding process. What strikes me here is the materiality. You can see the grain of the film, the sprocket holes, and the handwritten annotations. The blue number 60 is scrawled over the middle, and red marker highlights certain frames. It's like Frank is saying, "Here's the stuff of photography." Look at the range of images, from snow-lined streets to interiors of cafes and portraits of children. I think of other artists who embraced the imperfect, the raw, like Cy Twombly. There’s a similar desire to show the process, the marks, the gestures, as if to say that art is not about perfect representation but about the messy, beautiful act of seeing.