Washington, DC 1960

Robert Frank assembled this collage, "Washington, DC," from photographs and newsprint. Look how the grainy texture of the black and white prints contrasts with the stark text and images lifted from the papers. It's like Frank's trying to create a visual poem out of found materials. I love the way the image is built in layers, each element adding to the overall narrative. The newspaper clippings hint at stories, fragments of information, and the main photo; a man holds a camera up to his eye in front of a building beneath a US flag. This layering of images within images echoes the way we experience the world. Frank isn't just showing us a scene, he's showing us how that scene is mediated, reported, and remembered. This method of combining photographs with other materials reminds me of the work of someone like John Stezaker. They both seem interested in the relationship between the photographic image and its cultural context, but while Stezaker is smooth and precise, Frank is rough and emotive. Both artists embrace the inherent ambiguity of the image and suggest that meaning is never fixed.