Hallway--San Francisco 1956

Robert Frank made this photograph, Hallway--San Francisco, on film, so the greyscale is part of its DNA. It’s a tonal range of charcoal and smoke which feels very urban, very real. It’s so much about the mood: look at that man, slumped there, a dark mass that just sinks into the dark bench. I love how the dark lower register pushes all our focus up to the wall, where Frank has captured all these incidental, informational, even accidental marks. The way the light falls there, it’s almost like we’re seeing the history of this space being written into the surface of the photograph. A sign hangs between arrows pointing either way, lines of text promising information, but all we see is a blur. It reminds me of Walker Evans, who Frank very much admired. Both men were so interested in the poetry of the everyday, and finding a kind of accidental composition in what’s already there. It's the art of seeing, and then, of pointing.