Guggenheim 159--Jackson Pollock exhibition, Museum of Modern Art, New York City 1958

This is Robert Frank’s photographic contact sheet from the Jackson Pollock exhibition at the MoMA. With its gritty, black-and-white film grain, it's less about a perfect image and more about capturing a raw moment. You can see the artist's process right there - each frame a little experiment, a slightly different angle, a new crop. I'm drawn to the top row, where Pollock's painting is surrounded by the dark silhouettes of onlookers. The painting itself, a dense web of lines, seems to vibrate with energy against the static figures. It's like a visual dance between the controlled chaos of Pollock's mark-making and the composed observation of the crowd. It reminds me of the work of Garry Winogrand, who also had this knack for freezing the energy of a moment, capturing the messy, beautiful reality of life as it unfolds. Ultimately, Frank invites us to consider art not just as a thing, but as a living, breathing part of a larger conversation.