Guggenheim 363--Houston, Texas 1955

Robert Frank made this gelatin silver print, Guggenheim 363--Houston, Texas, sometime in the mid-twentieth century. It’s a series of frames, a film strip, that seems to capture a whole world, or at least a slice of one. There are interior and exterior scenes, people at work, cityscapes. The images are black and white, grainy, a little rough around the edges. There's a stark beauty in the contrast, a kind of raw honesty. In one frame, there’s a street scene, the road stretching out, disappearing into the horizon. It’s not picture-perfect; it’s real, gritty, and a bit unsettling. It reminds me of Walker Evans, maybe because of the subject matter. But Frank’s got his own thing going on, a kind of restless energy, a willingness to show you the world as he sees it, warts and all. It’s not about perfection; it’s about life, in all its messy, complicated glory.