Raoul Hague 9 1962

This is ‘Raoul Hague 9’, made by Robert Frank, sometime in the middle of the 20th century. It's a photo-strip, printed in black and white, a kind of document of a journey, maybe a road trip. I wonder what Robert Frank was thinking. I imagine him driving, stopping, snapping, framing, driving on... I like how the format of the strip captures the feeling of time passing, things changing, but staying the same too. The repeated motifs—the road, the buildings, the figure walking—create a rhythm, a visual echo. As a painter I’m always thinking about rhythm and repetition. It makes me think about the photographers he was looking at, and the painters those photographers were looking at. It's a conversation. Artists are always building on what came before, responding, reacting, pushing back. This work feels very intimate and personal. It is a series of choices, a way of saying ‘this is what I see, this is what I feel’.