Ski lift--Sports 1941 - 1945

Robert Frank took this photograph of a ski lift; it’s a small silver gelatin print. It’s like a little jewel of an image, full of texture. The grainy blacks and whites are so evocative. The composition is unusual, the angle is tilted, a ladder dominating the frame, and it really throws you off balance. It's like a snapshot, quick and dirty, not cleaned up for company. I love the way Frank embraces the accident, the imperfection. I can see the push and pull between the figurative and the abstract. The way the dark foreground meets the lighter sky, creates a tension, a visual friction that keeps the eye moving. This work reminds me a bit of the photography of Roy DeCarava. Both artists find poetry in the everyday, in the starkness and grit of urban and industrial landscapes. But like all great art, the image retains an element of mystery, you are never quite sure what’s going on, and that’s OK.