Paris 8A 1949 - 1950

Robert Frank put together this contact sheet, 'Paris 8A', to get a sense of his photographic practice, and to make decisions about what to print. I can only imagine the act of looking at these tiny images, all the decisions he must have made as to what to leave out. He was probably looking for the images that were going to be the strongest, the most representative of his vision. What a struggle that must have been. Here, the gestures are those of street life, the gaze of Frank who is trying to record something fleeting. He crops and frames moments and figures in a way that speaks to the longer history of painting, and its interest in fleeting but loaded moments. The longer I look at Frank’s work, the more I feel the power of his unique vision. He is in conversation with other photographers, like Cartier-Bresson, but, to my mind, he brings a totally original, painterly sensibility to the photographic image.