Guggenheim 593--Don Quixote statue, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco c. 1956

Robert Frank, a photographer born in Switzerland, made this contact sheet of gelatin silver prints. Looking at it, I see the artist as a kind of editor or composer, laying out the images like stanzas in a poem. The dark lines of the film strip act like a grid, but also create little gaps, moments of pause, or maybe even a kind of tension. The contrast between the images is stark, but it also offers a sense of flow – like the way thoughts and feelings shift in our minds. Frank shows us an image of the Don Quixote statue, a wedding party, a car. What was he thinking when he composed these specific photos together? Photography, like painting, is an act of selection. We have to choose what to include and what to leave out, what to emphasize, and what to let fade into the background. Robert Frank invites us to see the world in a new way – fragmented, chaotic, and beautiful all at once.