Guggenheim 642--Chinese cemetery, San Francisco c. 1956

This is a photographic contact sheet, Guggenheim 642, Chinese cemetery, San Francisco, by Robert Frank. What I think is so amazing about Frank's work is how he was able to capture the grittiness of everyday life with such raw emotion. This contact sheet, with its rows of images, gives us a glimpse into his process. You can see the editing at play here with these marks. It's like, what was he thinking when he circled those particular frames? Why those images? I find myself drawn to the way the light plays across the tombstones. It's like they’re reaching out to him, inviting him to reflect on mortality, history, and place. It reminds me of the way painters like Gerhard Richter use photography as a source for their paintings, abstracting and transforming the image into something new. Frank's work is part of an ongoing conversation about how we see and interpret the world around us.