Universal Studios--Universal City, California 1956

Robert Frank made this gelatin silver print, Universal Studios--Universal City, California, sometime in the twentieth century. The greyscale is almost painterly. I think about the darkroom as a site of process; of how the artist coaxes an image into being through layering and contrast. There’s a real sense of depth, of receding space here. It’s created by the way Frank has captured the light, the way it falls off, softly, in the corners of the image. A door, slightly ajar, is like a portal into another world. Two figures lurk behind it, faces obscured. What's their story? Their clothes, the way they are standing, suggest a kind of officialdom. The wall behind them is covered in papers. It makes me think of the bureaucracy of show business, and the blurred line between reality and fiction. Frank's work often captures a sense of melancholy and alienation. He reminds me a little bit of Walker Evans, another photographer interested in the vernacular. What I appreciate in both of their work is how they embraced the idea that art is always a conversation, a remix of what came before.