Switzerland 4 1961

Robert Frank made "Switzerland 4" with photography. It's a contact sheet, a document of process, like a painter's sketch. Look how the images line up, a series of moments captured on film. The textures are rich, the blacks deep, the whites luminous, achieved through darkroom alchemy. Notice the way the light falls. Is it romantic? Bleak? Frank lets the images breathe. He doesn’t try to tell you what to think. In one strip, figures huddle against a landscape. Maybe the same figures reappear elsewhere. The red box highlights one frame, but the whole sheet matters. It speaks to how one moment leads to the next. Frank felt the influence of photographers like Walker Evans. Like them, Frank looked to the world around him, but he did it with a raw, intuitive eye. This piece is not about Switzerland, but about seeing.