Guggenheim 25--South Carolina 1955

Robert Frank made this photographic work, Guggenheim 25--South Carolina, by capturing a series of black and white frames on Kodak safety film. I can see how Frank, with his camera, moved between the dancers in South Carolina, framing and capturing moments in time like he was painting with light. I'm sure he wanted to capture something of America. And what he found was a complicated beauty. There's a tension between intimacy and distance as the characters in these photographs dance and drink; I feel like I am there in the room, watching them. The texture of the film and the way the light falls feel like an invitation, almost like an embrace. The images appear in strips, like one continuous narrative, a kind of dance between seeing and telling. This reminds me of how artists are always in dialogue, borrowing, and lending ideas to each other. This work makes me think about how all of us, as artists, are always trying to capture something real, something true. And how we can only ever show a fragment of the whole.