Guggenheim 592--Funeral procession, San Francisco c. 1956

This is Robert Frank’s ‘Guggenheim 592--Funeral procession, San Francisco,’ a photographic work. Here is a strip of images, a series of frames, a kind of storyboard of still shots. I am thinking about Robert Frank walking the streets of San Francisco, camera in hand, looking, thinking, feeling. He is a kind of flaneur who walks with purpose, capturing moments of the everyday. In these images, a funeral procession is the backdrop, the still shots tell of a story, but the images are more like a question than an answer. I am struck by the composition and the way the images come together as a whole, each frame contributing to the overall narrative. It is like looking at pages of thumbnails of film all at once, as if looking at Gerhard Richter's series "Atlas". The film is gritty, the images stark, a high contrast of light and dark. It is deeply personal, a reflection of the artist’s inner world. Frank is in conversation with other image makers, all the time.