Guggenheim 54/Detroit 24 1955

This is Robert Frank’s “Guggenheim 54/Detroit 24,” a photographic contact sheet. The dark strips of film, speckled with images, read to me like a painter’s palette, a place for experiment and chance encounters. Frank leaves his test strips on view – a glimpse into the chaotic, often mundane process of image-making. I love the smattering of frames with the red grease pencil mark over them. It suggests a fleeting desire to select. When I look at this work, I think of the way painters like to leave traces of the process visible, like Cy Twombly's palimpsestic surfaces, where layers of marks build into a complex whole. It's like Frank is saying, "Here's the raw material, the outtakes, the stuff that usually gets discarded." It's a generous act, really, to share the behind-the-scenes of creation. Like, "Hey, making art is messy, uncertain, and full of happy accidents." And it reminds me that art is often as much about the journey as the destination, the conversation between artist and medium, and the unexpected discoveries along the way.