Men at bar--North Carolina 1955

This is Robert Frank’s photograph, ‘Men at Bar—North Carolina’. Frank had a knack for making visible the invisible structures holding society together, and he did it with light and shadow. Look at how he uses grey tones, not too high or low contrast, but still with detail, to capture a sense of everyday life. There’s a certain directness in his approach, he doesn’t hide the graininess or the way light flares around the edges of the jukebox in the background. It feels more like a snapshot than a carefully posed portrait. I keep coming back to the hand resting on the bar. You can almost feel the coolness of the surface, and see how the hand belongs to a working man. It’s a bit like the way the painter Fairfield Porter would depict the quiet dignity of ordinary people in ordinary settings. Frank, like Porter, reminds us that art can be found in the most unexpected places, if we only take the time to look.