Willem de Kooning 13 1961

Robert Frank created this photographic contact sheet, called "Willem de Kooning 13." I’m fascinated by the seriality of this. It’s like he’s feeling out his subject, de Kooning, searching for the right angle, the right mood. Each frame is a variation, a slight shift in perspective, revealing different facets of de Kooning’s presence. What was Frank thinking? Was he trying to capture the essence of de Kooning, or was he simply documenting a moment in time? Maybe he was looking for something else entirely; maybe a mood or an angle. The black and white intensifies the contrasts in the image. The repetition reminds me that art-making is often about seeing what's already there in the world, as if reality is a photograph to be developed, printed, cropped, and placed within the frame.