Woman with flowers, Paris 1951

This is Robert Frank's "Woman with flowers, Paris," a photograph, but also a study in gray, a symphony of near-blacks and near-whites. The photograph looks like it was made in the middle of an action, it could have been staged, but it gives the impression it was captured just at the right moment. It's interesting how Frank uses the monochrome to flatten and equalize everything. The woman's face, the flowers, the crowd, all rendered with the same tonality, as if nature and culture are one and the same. The light seems to emanate from the flowers, a radiant focal point amid the urban grayness. I keep thinking of that old saw, "everything looks the same in the dark." Frank, maybe a bit like Brassai, understood the poetics of the street. The work has the feeling of a conversation between artists, something ongoing, unresolved, and beautiful.