Peru 46 1948

Robert Frank made this gelatin silver print, titled Peru 46, which shows the film strip, the matrix, the before and after of his photographic process. I can imagine the artist, roaming with his camera, then back in the darkroom. The film strip is so physical, it is celluloid, a material substance. He has clearly chosen not to hide it. It is the armature, the raw matter from which the image emerges. It's like seeing the artist's contact sheet: the rejects, the blurred shots, the near misses. The materiality of painting is similar. The gesso, the linen, the oil paint. When you look at a painting you are not just looking at the image, but at the material that makes up the image. It is this constant to-and-fro between the image and the materiality that makes art so exciting. Like Robert Frank, artists are always in conversation with one another. Their works build on, respond to, and challenge the works that came before.