Spain 1949

Robert Frank made this gelatin silver print titled 'Spain' and well, you know, photographs aren't paintings, but they are kind of like paintings. I am immediately drawn to the intimate moment captured: a mother, or caregiver, tending to a child at a public fountain. You can feel the weight of the shawl she is wearing, the coolness of the water. The way the child is reaching up is everything. I imagine Frank spotting this scene, and being moved by it and lifting his camera to record the fleeting moment. What did it feel like to hold up the camera at that moment? What did he think as he developed the image? It's funny to me, this work is not about one definitive reading, but rather invites me to sit with the uncertainty and openness of experience. That is what it's all about.