Guggenheim 647B--Elementary school, San Francisco c. 1956

Robert Frank made this contact sheet, Guggenheim 647B, in San Francisco, showing us several images from an elementary school. These frames aren't precious, they’re raw. You can see how Frank is thinking, a stream of consciousness preserved in the darkroom. The surface itself is so important here, the gritty texture of the film, the sprocket holes, the numbers. It's like a map of his process. I keep coming back to the fourth row down. It’s an image of a solitary child, standing alone in a doorway. Is he in trouble, or just lost in thought? This small image becomes huge, the ambiguity of the moment, the emotional weight it carries. This reminds me of Garry Winogrand, who also seemed to grab images from the street, never knowing exactly what he had until the film was developed. Art’s not about answers but about the ongoing conversation.