Italy--Early Europe 12 1949

Robert Frank made this contact sheet, called Italy--Early Europe 12, with gelatin silver. It’s like a visual diary, a behind-the-scenes look at a photographer’s process. The surface is all about the grit of reality. I see Frank sorting through his takes, deciding what to keep, what to toss. You can see these rows of frames, each one a tiny window into a moment. I'm drawn to the handwritten annotations, the crop marks and notes in the upper right. It's like peeking into his brain. The marks are so spontaneous. There’s a realness here, a refusal to hide the messy, imperfect nature of creating something. Frank’s work always reminds me of Walker Evans, that same commitment to documenting the world as it is. He’s showing us that the beauty is in the details, the fleeting moments, the imperfections. It's an ongoing conversation, a back-and-forth between seeing and feeling.