Peru 9 1948

Robert Frank made this proof sheet, Peru 9, with gelatin silver. The different strips feel like music; there is a rhythm in their arrangement. I try to imagine Frank in the darkroom – he's like a composer, arranging images, not notes, in a sequence of visual beats. There are various scenes: groups of people, buildings, landscapes. I wonder what Frank was thinking, what he was trying to capture or say about Peru. Maybe he was interested in social dynamics or trying to understand the texture of life in a place so different from his own. Frank’s sequencing has a lineage in film and photography, but I also think about Gerhard Richter’s “Atlas” or even Sol LeWitt’s serial conceptualism. Artists are always in conversation, borrowing and building upon each other’s ideas. Proof sheets, contact sheets, they are like an open score or a field of possibilities. I like how they embrace chance and accident, offering multiple views without fixing a singular truth.