Paris 21 1959

Robert Frank’s photographic work, Paris 21, feels like a visual diary, or maybe a set of notes for something else entirely. He's working in black and white, which strips away the immediate seduction of color, pushing us to look at form and light, at the bare bones of the image. The whole piece is a contact sheet of different images, little windows into moments captured. The red markings scattered across feel like afterthoughts, a gesture, like someone has taken a pen and circled a few key words in a paragraph. Look at the strip in the middle, where the faces in the crowd are clear. There is a sense of immediacy, as if the work is incomplete. This kind of openness is powerful, because it embraces uncertainty. Frank isn't trying to tell us exactly what to think; instead, he's showing us his thinking. The effect is not dissimilar to Gerhard Richter’s blurred photographs, which also acknowledge the ambiguity inherent in visual representation.