Die Menschen (People) 1-12 1942 - 1946

Robert Frank made these twelve photographs of people on a single sheet sometime in the mid-20th century. The grainy black and white images have a stark, unvarnished quality, like sketches from a notebook, catching fleeting moments of everyday life. I'm drawn to the image in the lower left corner, number 10. An older person sits under a tree, their face etched with time, looking somewhere beyond the frame. The tree’s branches form a kind of halo, but there’s no idealization here. The photo just *sees* this person, as they are. It's a contrast with number 4, the young man drinking water, all sculpted torso, caught in the sun. There's a documentary feel to Frank’s photographs and they remind me of Walker Evans's photographs of people during the Depression, but Frank’s work feels more intimate, like he’s right there in the thick of things. It's the kind of work that reminds you that art is not about answers, but about seeing and feeling.