Peru 11 1948

Robert Frank’s ‘Peru 11’ is a photographic contact sheet, a matrix of possible images. It’s not one thing, but a collection of potential moments, a process laid bare. The texture here isn’t about paint, but light – the way it etches itself onto the film, creating these small, grainy windows into another world. The blacks are deep, the whites burn out; it's a high contrast world, full of shadow. Look at the sequence in the middle, the way the landscape unfolds. It's like a filmstrip, each frame a slight variation. It makes me think about Muybridge and the way he captured movement, but Frank is capturing something else – not just physical movement, but the movement of perception. You have to build the pictures in your mind, like a flip book or one of Gerhard Richter’s blurred photos, they are full of possibility.