Guggenheim 631--San Francisco c. 1956

Robert Frank made this gelatin silver print, “Guggenheim 631—San Francisco,” and what strikes me is the serial nature of the image, a kind of diary, or storyboard. It’s like a comic strip, but, you know, serious. The blacks are rich and the whites are blown out, it’s a high contrast world, one where light pours in and yet the shadows remain. This tension gives the work its edge, a feeling of being caught between worlds. The surface is smooth, like glass, and it reflects back at you, asking: what do you see? I keep coming back to that one frame in the middle, a child’s legs dangling, it is so strange, the ordinariness of it, but seen like this, in this sequence, the familiar becomes alien. Frank reminds me of Garry Winogrand, both capturing the gritty poetry of American life, unvarnished and real. Like a good poem, it doesn't tell you what to think.