Venice, Italy 27 1964

Robert Frank shot this contact sheet, Venice, Italy 27, on film at some point in his life. What was he searching for? I see a gathering, a series of portraits; he’s in the dark, developing in his darkroom, making decisions about what to crop and what to show us. I see Venice, that city of masks. Maybe this is a party? I imagine Frank, like me, was obsessive. He must have been driven to capture the world around him. A world that looks, from this distance, like it might have been filled with mystery and alienation. These are the kind of people I’d like to meet: were they talking about art? Politics? Did they know they were being photographed? I wonder if Frank had a plan, or if, like many artists, he was simply following his instincts, collecting images like a painter collects colors. This reminds me of the films of Warhol, the photographs of Eggleston. Artists are always in conversation, aren't they?