Walker Evans, Maine no number 1955

This strip of photos, Walker Evans, Maine no number, was captured by Robert Frank, who, like me, lived and worked in both worlds of painting and photography. It's easy to imagine Frank with his camera, like a painter with a brush, searching for the right angle. This isn't a single, perfect shot, but a sequence, a visual sentence strung together. You see a man in a car and then a building that says "the Lafayette." I wonder, was he thinking about Walker Evans, the photographer? Probably. It's like how painters think about other painters, an ongoing conversation, a visual call and response across time. Frank is saying something about America, about looking, about how we see each other. It's rough, unpolished, and all the more real for it. It’s like he's saying, "Here, look at this. What do you see?"