Hollywood 40 1958

Robert Frank made this photographic contact sheet, called Hollywood 40, sometime during his life. The images are black and white, and at first glance, everything seems rather dull, uniform. But then, the eye spots an intervention in the form of the red markings. They’re like a painter’s underdrawing, searching out and highlighting a specific moment. The texture of these images, the film grain, it's all part of the feel of the piece, it’s raw, and honest. The film strip gives it a narrative element, a suggestion of time passing, of moments captured and then left behind. It makes me think about the editing process, the choices involved in selecting and framing an image. Take the bottom left frame. The grainy quality almost abstracts the figures into blurry smudges. The bright light seems to flatten the picture, the figures are reduced to basic shapes, their features obscured. It’s like Frank is saying something about the illusion of Hollywood, the way it reduces people to stereotypes. Frank shares something in his gritty street photography with the paintings of Philip Guston, both of them finding beauty in the banal.