From the bus 18 1958

This is Robert Frank's "From the bus 18," a contact sheet composed of small, grainy, black and white photos. I can just imagine the feeling of anticipation, like a painter deciding which brush to pick up first. I wonder what it was like for Frank, peering through the viewfinder on a moving bus, trying to capture fleeting moments on the streets. There's a raw, immediate quality to these images. The film strip is marked and annotated with a blue pen which gives you a little hint into his creative process. The gritty texture and the high contrast give the pictures a sense of urgency, as if he were trying to freeze time itself. It makes me think about the way painters like Joan Mitchell used bold brushstrokes to convey energy and emotion. Like them, Frank was part of an ongoing conversation about how we see and experience the world, pushing the boundaries of his medium.