Guggenheim 571--Los Angeles 1955 - 1956

Robert Frank made this contact sheet, Guggenheim 571--Los Angeles, with a camera and photographic paper, though I’m not sure exactly when. The whole thing is, of course, photographic, but it's also a kind of drawing. It's the raw material, the equivalent of what’s on the cutting room floor – or in my studio, the crumpled paper on the floor – a record of what got made. The dark blackness of the photographic paper acts as a ground, a place where we can really see, materially, the light of the images. Down in the bottom right, the image of a mother and children at a table is incredibly affecting – the composition is both informal and completely precise. The work reminds me of Lisette Model – they both had a knack for catching people being themselves. Frank’s work always feels deeply humanist, and open to interpretation, an offering rather than a statement.