Paris 83B 1951 - 1952

Robert Frank took this contact sheet, _Paris 83B_, sometime in the middle of his career. I imagine him hunched over in the darkroom, the red light glowing, making decision after decision, cropping, burning, dodging. What was he looking for as he developed these frames? The decisive moment? The opposite? There’s a child pulling a toy, a couple posed, a dog lying dead. There’s a torn piece of paper with the number 83 scrawled in blue pen. A reminder? A date? A catalog number? The image gives us a look into Frank’s process, the choices he made, the shots he discarded. It reminds me of the way painters like to leave the drips and messy edges, the underpainting, the ghosts of previous marks showing through. It’s like saying, “Look, this is how I got here. This is the evidence of my search.”