Family and Barbara Forst--New York City no number 1954

This is Robert Frank's contact sheet, *Family and Barbara Forst--New York City no number*. Here, Frank is like a painter deciding what bit of life to blow up, blow up big. What to show, what to hide? You can imagine him in the darkroom, wrestling with these images of family, of Barbara, probably his wife at the time. He is asking himself what to keep, what to burn, what to offer up to the rest of us. This contact sheet makes me think about the physical act of looking, feeling the grain, and the contrast, as if squinting in bright sunlight. It’s such a tactile thing, photography; the darkroom its own kind of alchemic studio, just like painting. There is a beautiful kind of intimacy and casualness to these scenes of domesticity – that’s what it’s all about, the push and pull of relationships, the light and shadow of family life, all that human stuff which has interested artists across time and media.