Children playing, Paris

Robert Frank made this photograph in Paris, and who knows when exactly, but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is how he’s composed the shot using a kind of tonal palette of gray. There's a beautiful tension between stillness and motion in this image. Look at the ground, which is the largest part of the picture, occupying the foreground. It's full of detail, and looks like the surface of painting, but it's also the ground the children are running on. It’s almost monochromatic, isn't it? And then there’s the line of children, obscured by trees, running across the center. What interests me most is the mood. I'm reminded of Helen Levitt's photographs of children in New York, but Frank gives it a European twist, which adds to the overall feeling of nostalgia. Like a memory, it's both clear and out of reach. What is the game they’re playing? It’s a dance, a mystery, and a bit melancholic, too.