Guggenheim 646A--Boxing match, San Francisco c. 1956

Robert Frank shot this contact sheet from a boxing match in San Francisco sometime in the mid-20th century. Look at how Frank made this work; strips of 35mm negatives, arranged in a grid, the black frame emphasizing the individual moments, much like panels in a graphic novel. I bet Frank walked around the boxing match, snapping away, trying to catch the right moment. What was he looking for? The perfect punch? The crowd's reaction? The quiet intensity before the storm? I love how he included shots of the edges and in-betweens; a contact sheet like this reminds us that art is a process of selection, reduction, and emphasis. The red marks – someone, maybe Frank himself – has edited, circling and crossing out to focus our attention. Maybe they thought this one tells a better story, or maybe it just looked cooler. It's like a painter layering and scraping, deciding what to keep and what to bury. Frank's work reminds me of other photographers like Garry Winogrand, who were also trying to capture the messy reality of American life. Artists are always talking to each other across time. Photography, like painting, can be a form of embodied expression, embracing the accidental and the uncertain, and allowing for multiple readings.