Le Canal du Nord--Paris 8B 1951 - 1952

Robert Frank made this photographic collage, Le Canal du Nord—Paris 8B, using gelatin silver print and blue pencil. It’s like a visual diary, raw and unfiltered. The contact sheets show Paris through Frank's eyes, frame by frame, a sequence of moments. I’m drawn to the physicality of it. The way the light captures the grain of the film. The number eight, scrawled in the middle, it’s like a note to himself. The blue pencil lines cutting through the images, they aren’t just marks, they’re decisions. There is one frame, towards the top right, with the blue pencil highlighting the edges. It's like he's saying, "look here." It reminds me a bit of the work of someone like Gerhard Richter and his use of photography in painting. With this piece we see Frank embracing the inherent ambiguity of art and inviting us to find our own narrative within the sequence. It's a conversation, not a lecture.