Filming, CBS TV studio--Burbank, California c. 1955 - 1956

Robert Frank captured this image, Filming, CBS TV studio--Burbank, California, with his camera. The photograph plunges us into the gritty reality of a TV studio back in the day, focusing on the unsung heroes behind the scenes. You can almost feel the tension and the controlled chaos, right? I’m picturing Frank navigating this maze of cables and equipment, trying to capture something real amidst all the artifice. Look at the way the light falls on the operator, the way the image on the monitor stares back at us. It’s a Russian doll of looking, a set of frames within frames. You have this flicker of another reality being recorded in real time. Frank was always drawn to the margins, to the overlooked corners of society. This image, with its raw, unfiltered quality, reminds me of other photographers like Garry Winogrand, who found beauty in the everyday. And like all great art, it invites us to look closer, to question what we think we see.