Guggenheim 645A/Americans 57--San Francisco 1956

Robert Frank made this work, Guggenheim 645A/Americans 57--San Francisco, using gelatin silver print. It's a contact sheet, so we're seeing the raw material of his process, the outtakes, the almost-weres. The scratches and dust, the red grease pencil marks circling certain frames, all become part of the story. It is about choosing and arranging, isn’t it? The tonal range is beautiful, from the dense blacks of the film strips themselves to the soft grays of the cemetery landscapes. Look at how the light catches the headstones in the top row, each one a tiny, ghostly rectangle. That repetition, that rhythm, it’s almost like a musical score. Frank has a way of finding poetry in the everyday, or maybe it’s more accurate to say he finds the everyday in poetry. Like Walker Evans, Frank sees America as a place of quiet dignity and melancholy. It’s not about grand gestures but about the small, almost overlooked moments that make up a life.