Pablo--San Francisco 1956

Robert Frank captured this image, Pablo--San Francisco, likely with a 35mm camera, sometime in his storied career. I wonder about this young boy Pablo, standing in the dry grass, clutching something in his hands. Is it a toy? A flower? Frank’s photo is cropped, but the light is expansive. I imagine him looking off wistfully into the distance, and I feel like Frank saw something beautiful and sad in this fleeting moment, and stopped everything to record it. It’s a super grainy, contrast-y black and white, with an amazing depth of field. Frank’s focus is sharp, and it brings the rest of the composition into high relief: it’s like he’s saying, hey, look at this thing I noticed! And you see these elements in all of Frank’s work. We can almost feel him discovering the scene as he shoots. It makes me want to grab my camera and look for beauty in the everyday, too.