Time clock, Universal Studios--Universal City, California 1956

This black and white photograph of a time clock at Universal Studios in California was shot by Robert Frank, and it is like a punch in the face, but a gentle one. I imagine Frank, with his camera, lurking in the mundane corners of this studio lot. There's the clock itself, a dull, blocky machine that looks like it’s been crying out for color. Next to it a sign warns “YOU MUST SIGN YOUR TIME CARD”--as if the studio workers might forget? I wonder, was Frank poking fun at the rigidity of the studio system? What about the people working at Universal, dreaming of fame? Were they aware of the irony of clocking in and out while creating illusions of timelessness on screen? It reminds me of some of the other melancholic documentarians like Walker Evans, who also looked for the poetry in everyday life. Frank is never sentimental, but there’s a deep empathy here, a sense of shared experience, like he knows exactly what it feels like to be a cog in the machine. Ultimately, Frank makes me see the extraordinary in the ordinary, the beauty in the banal.