Paris 59B 1951 - 1952

Robert Frank made 'Paris 59B' sometime around 1959 using photography and some kind of blue marker pen. It’s a contact sheet, a record of a roll of film, and Frank has gone back into it, editing it, and adding his own marks. The images themselves are fairly mundane. Everyday street scenes, buildings, that sort of thing, captured in black and white. But then you notice these very gestural blue marks on the surface, scrawled across the images, circling certain frames. It’s like he’s having a conversation with himself, trying to figure out what’s working and what isn’t. That blue mark in the lower centre really gets me. It looks like a signature, but it's not, or maybe it is? It’s like he is asking us to look closely, not just at the photo itself, but at his process, his thinking. For me, it brings to mind Cy Twombly's work, not in terms of style, but in that same sense of playful, almost chaotic mark-making. Both artists seem interested in the poetics of gesture. Ultimately, the work shows that the most interesting art often embraces uncertainty and the freedom to change your mind.