Family no number 1954

Robert Frank's photographic print, "Family no number", captures a kind of domestic theater on celluloid. It's process laid bare, you can see the sprocket holes and frame numbers. I find myself drawn to the middle strips, the staged images of a child. The blown-out light is so severe, and these photos are so obviously posed, that they evoke a feeling of great tenderness. The child is performing for the camera, for the father, and we get to see the evidence of this exchange. Frank makes me think of Helen Levitt, capturing fleeting moments of life on the streets of New York, but with a darker, more psychological edge. In the end, what stays with me is the tension between the staged and the spontaneous, the public and the private. It's this play between intention and accident that makes Frank's work so compelling, so human.