Guggenheim 29/Americans 23--Georgetown, South Carolina 1955

Robert Frank made this contact sheet for his book, ‘The Americans.’ Each frame is like a little window. I imagine Frank driving around Georgetown, South Carolina, thinking about Walker Evans, snapping shots of the world as it was. Each little rectangle shows a bit of life, with a loose and intuitive approach. There are country roads and buildings, people on porches, and children walking, all rendered in stark black and white. It's like he's saying, "Look at this. Look at this too." The red marks he added point out some shots, but I wonder, why these ones? It's a kind of editing, a decision-making process that we get to see. I think about other photographers like Garry Winogrand, who also made this kind of street photography, and how much they were trying to just catch the world as it went by. Frank is showing us how he saw, felt, and chose. He invites us to participate in how meaning is made.