Guggenheim 587--San Francisco c. 1956

Robert Frank made this contact sheet, Guggenheim 587--San Francisco, by exposing light onto strips of film. It's all about sequences, and the way one image bleeds into the next. The material quality of this piece, the grainy blacks and whites, is so raw. It feels immediate and intimate, like a secret glimpse into a private world. You can almost smell the darkroom chemicals and hear the whir of the camera. Look closely at the third row from the top, the first frame on the left: a child on a bike. It speaks to a quiet melancholy, a sense of fleeting moments and untold stories. Frank's work reminds me of Diane Arbus, how she also captured those in-between, often overlooked moments of life. What both of these photographers did was to reveal how every snapshot holds more than it seems. They showed us that art isn't just about what you see, but how you see it.