Children playing with suitcase

Robert Frank took this photograph, Children playing with suitcase, sometime in the middle of the last century, with, presumably, a handheld camera. I love the way the light is caught in the children's hair, the soft grey tones rendering their play with a kind of solemnity. The suitcase itself is wonderful, covered in a regular, geometric pattern, a tactile and textural form that anchors the children in space. The suitcase becomes a stage, an alter, an imaginary world. Look how the children's hands grip the edge of the suitcase, like they are holding onto something precious, something secret. The composition is intimate, cropped, and immediate, like a memory half-forgotten, half-recalled. Frank’s images often have this quality; they look casual but are, in fact, highly constructed. Like Helen Levitt, he has an eye for the everyday, revealing the extraordinary in the ordinary.