Passing train--Elko, Nevada 1956

Robert Frank made this photograph, "Passing train--Elko, Nevada," with gelatin silver, and it's a picture about seeing, or maybe about what we miss when we look. There's a particular flatness to the photograph, and the way the train stretches out, all blurry, gives you a sense of movement and also a kind of bleary vision. I’m drawn to the number ‘677’ scrawled on the bottom left. This feels so human, a trace of something real, like the way Cy Twombly would mark his canvases with numbers. It creates a space for contemplation. It reminds me of some of the New Topographics photographers and their interest in the mundane, like Stephen Shore, but Frank's feels rawer, more personal. The torn paper at the top left adds to the feeling that this is about process, about the artist seeing and recording the world in a very direct way. It’s less about the train and more about how Frank experienced this moment in time.