Guggenheim 696/Americans 7--Butte, Montana 1956

Robert Frank made this contact sheet called Guggenheim 696/Americans 7—Butte, Montana, sometime in the middle of the last century. I can imagine him in the darkroom, hunched over, peering at the negatives, trying to pick out the right image. There’s something really beautiful about seeing all these frames together – it's like getting a glimpse into the artist’s thought process. You see the frames he liked enough to mark with a red pencil. Each frame is like a little window, capturing a fleeting moment. It must have been quite a task to sift through all these images, looking for something special, something that speaks to him. I think about the physical act of photography and the way it invites us to really look at the world. It’s a conversation, really, between the artist, the subject, and the viewer. Frank's work has inspired countless other artists and photographers, and it's amazing how these images continue to resonate across time. It's a beautiful, open-ended dialogue, full of possibilities.