City of London 9 1952 - 1953

Robert Frank's "City of London 9" is a photographic contact sheet, a kind of artist's sketchbook made of light and time. The high contrast and stark black and white tonality speak to Frank's gritty realism. The way he handles the camera is like a painter handling a brush; each shot a deliberate stroke, capturing fleeting moments, chance encounters. There's a rawness to the material, the unedited film strips laid bare. You can see the sprockets, the frame numbers, the messy marker annotations, all evidence of the artistic process. My eye is drawn to the loop at the bottom, it’s like a drawing with a grease pencil of some sort. Look at the way it captures people in transit, the blurred figures and the abstract architecture, it reminds me of how we navigate cities in our minds. Frank, like his contemporary Helen Levitt, found poetry in the everyday. His work invites us to find beauty in imperfection, to embrace the unpredictable nature of art and life.