Children at Hershey plant--Hershey, Pennsylvania 1956

Robert Frank made this photograph, "Children at Hershey plant--Hershey, Pennsylvania," using black and white film sometime in the mid-twentieth century. The picture is a bit blurry, as if things are happening too fast to get a clear shot. You have a sense that Frank is hanging back, hovering at the margins. The children are ushered into a bright room at the factory, and you see their backs, their heads, that’s all. The eye-level adults, and the backs of the children's heads, is like a dark mass. It almost looks as if he’s documenting a kind of initiation or an induction into something. You almost wonder what Frank was thinking at the time. Photography is an art, you know, of capturing the real, even if it's just one interpretation of it. Like painting, photography continues to be a powerful medium for expression and inquiry.