Sculpture in park, Paris 1951

This silver gelatin print by Robert Frank captures a sculpture in a park in Paris, at an unknown date. The sepia tone of the photograph gives the whole scene a feeling of having been lost, or found, in time. There’s a dance happening here between foreground and background, between hard and soft. The statue, a figure draped in classical robes, anchors the composition, while the blurred trees on either side push the view into the space. In the distance, we glimpse passersby and a grand building, all rendered a little hazy, like a memory. Frank reminds me a little of Garry Winogrand; they both caught the street life, raw and unposed. But where Winogrand was all about the chaos, Frank’s got this quiet melancholy, a loneliness that hangs in the air. It reminds us that art isn't about answers, but about finding new ways to ask questions.