Paris 10 1959

Robert Frank made this series of gelatin silver prints, titled Paris 10, using his camera. Just looking at the nine strips of film, you know there’s been a huge amount of editing, a relentless refining of images. I imagine Frank wandering through Paris, his camera a third eye, a tool to capture fleeting moments. There he is, lost in thought, framing shots, waiting for the decisive moment. I wonder what he was thinking when he saw the poster of the woman with the frame around her face, the one at the top of the roll? Was he thinking of painting and framing? The darkroom is his studio, the place where the real magic happens. He crops, dodges, and burns, coaxing the image to life. He’s wrestling with reality, trying to make sense of the chaos, reducing life into little rectangles. Each print a negotiation between what he saw and what he felt. And then he puts them all together on the page, a conversation between pictures.