Universal Studios--Universal City, California 1956

Curator: Today we're looking at Robert Frank’s “Universal Studios—Universal City, California,” taken in 1956, a gelatin silver print. It captures a moment of quiet, almost staged inactivity, against the backdrop of a massive, looming building. Editor: My immediate reaction is this sense of forced leisure. The car, the people sitting… it all feels incredibly posed, like a stage set. There's this incredible contrast between the industrial, blocky building behind and the carefully arranged tableau in front. Curator: Exactly. The very visible artifice of Hollywood. The photograph, part of his wider body of work documenting America, uses Universal Studios as a stand-in for something larger about manufactured realities, especially the power dynamics at play within entertainment. Editor: And consider the labor involved. These individuals – presumably employees, maybe extras? – are essentially props themselves, positioned to project a certain image of this entertainment machine. Curator: It is a photograph steeped in those nuances. Think about the gender and racial implications here: Who gets to sit, and who gets to control the narrative? Editor: You are spot on in pointing to that uncomfortable arrangement. The materials, the car itself – all objects produced by labor, displayed as markers of success. The entire scene is composed through labor for leisure's sake. It is also a consumption that's part of this visual narrative. Curator: Furthermore, there is the tension inherent to Frank's photography as he sought to disrupt dominant narratives about American life. Frank offers, perhaps, a premonition of cultural shifts on the horizon, ones where identities are contested and constructed within capitalist production. The choice to highlight this seemingly mundane, in-between moment feels very intentional. Editor: Agreed. In this gelatin silver print, Frank does not provide any glamorous illusions, or artifice. The graininess of the print, the composition itself, they are material elements serving to expose rather than conceal the mechanics of the system. A stark, critical look. Curator: The work makes us think more deeply about what is presented to us through different lenses of power in culture. Editor: And through the choices that Robert Frank made we can trace how images operate both within and against dominant narratives of American consumerism and power.