Cocksucker Blues 1972

This is a photograph called Cocksucker Blues by Robert Frank. The close-up black and white image shows three almost identical frames of Mick Jagger. I wonder what Frank was thinking when he made this. Maybe he’s trying to get at something about celebrity, the way that images are made, reproduced and consumed, turning real people into surfaces. Jagger’s looking right at us in the first image, almost confrontational, but by the third, he’s hidden behind dark glasses, his face obscured, like he can't be reached. Frank's use of photography makes me think about painting – the way one brushstroke leads to another, building up the surface, obscuring, revealing, and ultimately creating something new. There's so much uncertainty in the process, but that’s where the magic happens, I reckon.