Switzerland 2 1961

Robert Frank's 'Switzerland 2' is a series of gelatin silver prints on a black background. It's like a photographer's sketchbook, a place for visual notes and half-formed ideas. I can imagine Frank in his darkroom, carefully arranging the strips, snipping and editing, and thinking. The red outlines around some of the frames feel like his way of emphasizing a moment, a detail that caught his eye, things that he wants to return to. The tree branches, like veins of ink, connect to the people sitting at a table. That reminds me of Philip Guston and his own visual language: the way one form speaks to another, across time, in the artist's mind. Like Guston, Frank seems to be saying that art is a conversation, a way of thinking through images, and seeing how different ways of seeing create new ways of thinking. We are all influencing each other, playing with the same ideas, and remixing them again and again.