Guggenheim 568--Pablo's birthday party, Los Angeles 1956

Robert Frank made this contact sheet – a series of small, dark photographs on a single sheet of photographic paper – at Pablo’s birthday party in Los Angeles. I think of Frank, surrounded by the partygoers, and I imagine the click of his camera, the flash illuminating moments of joy. He seems to want to capture every nuance, every fleeting expression. It is almost as if Frank wants to participate and also observe the scene from a remove. The dark frames separate the individual images. I'm sure that, at this moment, he was probably deciding which would be the most powerful frame. The images on this contact sheet are alive with an intimate and raw quality that reminds me of the work of other photographers of the time. Frank had a gift for finding beauty in the everyday, the messy, and the unposed. Photography became a deeply embodied process of seeing and feeling, and the darkroom a space of artistic inquiry and experimentation.