Guggenheim 438--Los Angeles 1955 - 1956

Robert Frank made this contact sheet, Guggenheim 438--Los Angeles, using gelatin silver print. It's a record, a spill of images, film strips, each frame a potential story, the whole a map of looking and seeing. The texture here isn't about paint but light, those silver particles doing their dance. Look at how the images flicker, the blacks dense, the whites almost burning out. There's a looseness, a feeling of being in the world, not just observing it. Take that strip of film in the middle, the reflections in a shop window, like a painting by Gerhard Richter. Frank invites us to see Los Angeles through his lens, not as a fixed image, but a process of capture, a series of moments strung together. The rawness is what makes it sing.