Dime store--Lincoln, Nebraska 1956

Robert Frank made this photograph, Dime store--Lincoln, Nebraska, which looks like a documentary image, but it's been hand-worked and is also abstract. The image shows the view looking down the stairwell of a dime store; the shelves are packed, but there is a lot of empty space too. The image is black and white, but somebody has added marks in pencil down the right edge and along the wall on the right side of the image. I wonder what Frank was thinking when he added those lines. Maybe it felt too plain, too descriptive, maybe the squiggles are the artist thinking, the artist feeling something more. Photography can be like that: a descriptive record that falls flat, but he adds marks on the photograph surface. That little gesture reminds me that artmaking is an ongoing conversation and exchange of ideas across time. The artist is always trying to add feeling and depth and meaning to whatever it is, whatever they’re using, to get it done.