Florida 27 1958

Robert Frank made this photographic contact sheet, Florida 27, sometime during his career. I am taken by the act of selection here: the array of images before and after what he chose to print as a single image. You see him here in the dark room, working like a painter, searching for the right composition: a pair of bathing girls, motorcycles on a city street. This is the artist choosing what to foreground and what to leave out. The act of framing - both literally and figuratively - becomes so important here. What do we leave out? The artist, like a scientist, is conducting experiments. A contact sheet is an artist thinking in images; it is a mind map of intuition and seeing. Frank gives us a glimpse into his process, and it reminds me that artists are always in conversation with each other, across time, inspiring new forms of seeing.