Paris 46B 1951 - 1952

This is Robert Frank’s “Paris 46B,” a series of black and white photographs printed onto paper. He’s caught moments of everyday Parisian life, like a flâneur with a camera. I find myself thinking about the materiality of photography here, about the contrast between the slickness of the machine, the lens, and the chemicals, and the soft, almost painterly way the light falls. I love to imagine Frank walking around the city, looking for the exact right moment to capture. What was he thinking? What caught his eye? Was he thinking about Atget? The way he has marked some of the images makes me think about process: a red box drawn around one photo, blue marks on others. It reminds me of the way painters rework and revise, trying to find the hidden painting within the painting. It’s like he’s saying, “This one! Look at this one!” It shows that even in photography, there’s this idea of continuous dialogue and revision, each image speaking to the others, a constant back-and-forth between intention and outcome.