Guggenheim 770--Wanamaker fire, 10th Street, New York City 1956

This is Guggenheim 770—Wanamaker fire, 10th Street, New York City, by Robert Frank. It's a contact sheet. Imagine him in the darkroom, the red glow, the smell of chemicals, the careful placement of the negative strip onto the paper. I can picture Frank’s eye behind the lens, trying to frame the event. He's witnessing the crowd gathered at the scene of the fire. He's got a sense of documentary, like, how do you capture the scope and energy of the disaster? He must have been thinking about the decisive moment, like Cartier-Bresson, but also, how to mess with it, how to be off-kilter. What does it mean to show the before and after? A roll of film is like a story arc with a beginning, middle and end. It can take you somewhere unexpected. It could take painting somewhere new too. I wonder what Frank would have made of that.