Guggenheim 664/Americans 81--Reno, Nevada 1956

Robert Frank made this proof sheet of negatives, Guggenheim 664/Americans 81--Reno, Nevada, sometime in the 20th century. I think about the darkroom as a site of creation, like my studio. These images aren't just records; they are material things. They have tone, contrast, and grain. I love the marks, the dust, and the scratches. It makes me think about Frank's process of selection, how he crops and sequences to build meaning. The red marker square around certain images is so interesting. He's isolating a moment, lifting it out of the stream of images. In the strip on the bottom, the way a man and woman in suits face each other feels particularly filmic. This small gesture of circling an image insists we look closer, and that’s where the work happens. I think about photographers like Garry Winogrand or Helen Levitt, who wandered the streets looking for the extraordinary in the everyday. It's like they are saying, ‘look at this thing, right here, right now!’