Abercrombie & Fitch 5 1955

Robert Frank's photo contact sheet, Abercrombie & Fitch 5, is a map of moments. It's not a painting, but I look at it like one: a process unfolding. I imagine Frank in the darkroom, hunched over, bathed in the dim red light, the air thick with the smell of chemicals. I bet he was like me - intuitively reaching out, making marks and decisions... The contact sheet itself becomes a kind of canvas where he's not just capturing images, but also arranging, selecting, and framing his experiences. Look at the red marks, like a painter’s underpainting, revealing a kind of raw, unfiltered feeling. The process of selection is a conversation, and the final print is less about the single perfect shot, and more about the dialogue between vision and reality. I feel like it's a bit like a Cy Twombly for the photography world. It speaks to a long exchange between artists about how we see.