Filming Elia Kazan's "Wild River"--Tennessee 11 Possibly 1959

Robert Frank made this contact sheet, “Filming Elia Kazan's "Wild River"--Tennessee 11," from a roll of 35mm film; it’s a window into his process, or any photographer’s really, where the whole thing is there, the good, the bad, and the in-between. As I look at it, I imagine Frank hanging out on set, trying to be invisible, but also trying to capture the essence of what Kazan was up to. It’s like he’s trying to find the soul of the movie, frame by frame. It makes me think about how we, as artists, are always searching for something, even when we don’t know what it is. You can see some of the frames are marked with grease pencil, probably Frank’s edit, signaling to himself what was working. The image shows a little world, a record of how the photographer selected, cropped, and made meaning from an extended take. I love seeing his thinking, his selection process, and his final choices.