Interior of station--Tennessee 1955

Robert Frank captured "Interior of station--Tennessee" with a camera at some point in his life. And what I notice first is the light, how it slices through the space. It’s all grays, but each one has a different story to tell. The floor, a smooth expanse, leads back to a wall of newspapers or magazines – knowledge, news, stories piled high. And then there’s this figure, a man in a hat, almost hidden, leaning against the bench. The bench, with its parallel chrome lines, meets the man’s body, the line of his form - a silent echo of other formal lines. I think about the way Frank crops his images, so often at an angle or not quite centered. I think of the work of Garry Winogrand, who documented New York street life, and how both artists were looking for a kind of truth, raw and unpolished, in the everyday. It’s a vision that acknowledges the world’s beautiful messiness, and leaves us space to feel it.