Auto graveyard--Tennessee 1955

Robert Frank made this photograph, “Auto graveyard—Tennessee,” and well, it looks like what it is. A graveyard of cars. I imagine Frank standing there, maybe a bit forlorn or pensive, but also, excited by what’s in front of him. The light is soft and gray, and the cars are hulking, like dinosaur bones. A man walks in front of the image, his head bowed, maybe looking for a spare part. I am thinking about how Frank saw the poetry in these discarded objects. How he elevates the ordinary into something monumental. It reminds me of other photographers, like Bernd and Hilla Becher, who also found beauty in industrial landscapes. There is something melancholic, even spiritual, about the picture: all these carcasses, like relics. Frank is in conversation with a whole range of artists, and the conversation itself is kind of immortal, like the picture. I like the idea of art as this ongoing exchange, where meanings shift and emerge over time.