Filming Elia Kazan's "Wild River"--Tennessee 7 Possibly 1959

Robert Frank made this series of photographs, "Filming Elia Kazan's 'Wild River' -- Tennessee 7," using black and white film. It’s like we’re looking at his contact sheet, a whole bunch of little glimpses strung together, moments of making a movie about the Tennessee Valley Authority. I see these frames and I imagine Frank, camera in hand, just clicking away, trying to catch the feel of the film set. A guy in a hat, a car door with “TVA” boldly printed on it, a little house. He's like a painter, only instead of brushstrokes, he uses light and shadow. Each shot is a quick gesture, a feeling grabbed out of the air. The high contrast gives everything a stark, immediate quality. Frank wasn’t trying to pretty things up; he was after something raw and real. This reminds me a lot of Walker Evans’s photographs of the Depression, the way they both looked at America head-on. In the end it's about seeing what's there, and about the human condition.