Congressional Z c. 1954 - 1955

Robert Frank made this contact sheet, Congressional Z, using gelatin silver on paper. It's a photographic sketch, a kind of rapid-fire notation, isn't it? I can imagine Frank in the darkroom, sleeves rolled up, the smell of chemicals in the air, making quick decisions on which images would make the cut. Look at the red x-marks over some of the frames, like he’s saying “no, not this one,” a decisive gesture, cutting out what doesn't fit. The rejected images become ghosts of the maybe, the could-have-been. There's a rhythm to these images, this back and forth of selection and rejection. I think of artists like Cy Twombly, who also worked in series, repetition and variation part of their artistic process. The images presented here evoke the feeling of being on a train, a sense of passing through, fleeting moments, glimpses of lives in transit. Frank gives us the sense that photography, like painting, is a practice of looking, of seeing, and of questioning what we think we know.