Guggenheim 622--San Francisco c. 1956

This is Guggenheim 622--San Francisco, a photogram by Robert Frank. The photogram is like a page of contact sheets. Frank isn't editing or cropping, but presenting a sequence of exposures. I imagine the darkroom as a space of transformation, where latent images come to life through careful manipulation. I remember when I first started developing film. It felt like magic, watching the image slowly appear in the developer tray. Each print was a unique expression of light and shadow. The stark tonality of the print evokes a sense of immediacy, almost like raw data. The granularity of the image reminds me of the materiality of photography. It's a reminder that art-making is physical. This piece makes me think of other photographers like Garry Winogrand, who also captured the energy of urban life with a kind of restless curiosity. Artists are always in dialogue with each other.