Guggenheim 647A--San Francisco c. 1956

Robert Frank made this contact sheet, using gelatin silver, at some point in his life probably while working on the Americans. Right away, you can see that Frank didn’t worry about keeping the process hidden: he gives you everything. He’s letting chance and accident be part of the work. Looking at the surface, I keep noticing the way the light is handled, going from light to dark in the same frame. See how the emulsion is scratched in places? The light flares? It makes me think about memory and how unreliable it is. Look at the images of people with the “Buddha-Brand Candies” boxes. To me, they capture a particular kind of post-war consumerism. What’s so interesting about Frank, when you think about someone like Walker Evans, is how open he is, not just to the world, but to the dark and complicated parts of himself. You could put him next to Garry Winogrand. Like them, it feels like Frank is willing to let things be messy and unresolved, maybe because that’s just how life is.