Guggenheim 725--Omaha, Nebraska 1956

Robert Frank made this photographic contact sheet, titled Guggenheim 725--Omaha, Nebraska, using gelatin silver, and you can see the whole process right here. It's like the artist is saying, "Here’s what I saw, here’s what I chose, here’s what I didn’t.” The texture of the film, the grain, the way the light and shadow play, feels so immediate. Look at that image of the roller coaster—you can almost feel the rickety climb and the stomach-dropping plunge. Then there are these interiors, maybe meetings, maybe parties. I’m drawn to the bottom row, the image contained within a red border, where everyone’s crammed together. It reminds me of Garry Winogrand, another photographer who just went out and snapped, trying to capture the world as it is, messy and alive. The beauty of this piece lies in the way that it captures the artmaking process, where there are no fixed or definitive meanings, inviting us to find our own stories.