Venice, Italy 6 1964

This is Robert Frank’s Venice, Italy 6, a photographic work. What you're looking at is a series of images, a whole roll, presented as one piece. It’s a little like a sketchbook page, or a painter's canvas where all the under-drawings are left visible. I love the gritty, grainy texture of Frank’s photography. It feels so immediate, like a raw document. The images themselves are dark, shadowy, and full of contrast. It makes me feel like I am there in Venice. The circles scratched onto the print – that's Frank adding to the conversation. Look at the bottom row, at the face circled in orange. Is this the artist? Is this just a person? I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter, that kind of ambiguity is what makes this image so compelling. It reminds me a little of the photo-based work of Gerhard Richter, or maybe even Andy Warhol, in their use of serial imagery. It’s all about the back and forth, the give and take, the questions.