Paris 25 1959

Robert Frank created "Paris 25" with gelatin silver, capturing a contact sheet of negatives, probably in the 1950s. Looking at these strips of images, I imagine Frank in his darkroom, surrounded by the scent of chemicals, light glowing from the enlarger. You see a sequence, frames of the world captured then laid out to be puzzled over. He’s asking himself questions, trying out different crops and arrangements. The image at the bottom, the dark figure reflected in the mirror, is especially compelling. I wonder what he was thinking when he shot that frame? Was it a moment of self-reflection, a glimpse into his own artistic process? The materiality is really present here. You can almost feel the texture of the photographic paper, the crisp edges of the film. It reminds me of the way Cy Twombly used to incorporate found objects into his paintings. Artists are always in conversation, riffing off each other’s ideas, finding new ways to see the world.