Guggenheim 41/Detroit 2 1955

Here's a contact sheet by Robert Frank, who hopped around the USA with his camera, looking at life in the mid-century. This work shows a film strip – or rather several – printed to a single sheet. It gives us a behind-the-scenes look at how Frank made photos, which, like drawings, can be considered marks of a searching eye. What was he looking for? What's he telling us? Well, the film strip is full of starts and stops, of slight adjustments and changes of heart. It's a record of his process of seeing. You can sense Frank moving through the world, improvising, making choices, rejecting them, and moving on. Maybe photography is the same as painting. It's a way to be in the world and make contact with it. As a painter, I know that that dialogue is really what it's all about. And isn't that what art is for?