Hollywood 53 1958

Robert Frank made this photographic contact sheet, sometime around 1953. There's something really visceral about seeing all these frames together, like a painter's sketches. It's not just about the individual images, but the way Frank is thinking through the process. The blacks are so dense, they almost feel like a physical presence, a solid mass contrasting with the ephemeral quality of the light. Look at the sequence with the man behind the desk, caught in different poses. It's like a little film strip, a moment stretched out and examined from multiple angles. This reminds me a bit of Warhol's screen tests, the way they both find something compelling in repetition and slight variation. It's like they are asking us to slow down, to really look at what's in front of us. For me, it highlights the beauty of art's ambiguity, how it can embrace different views.