From the bus 32 1958

This is Robert Frank’s contact sheet, titled ‘From the bus 32’, made sometime in the mid-20th century. What interests me about this work is the way it presents the process of photography itself. The film strip, the sequential nature of the images, and even the marks made on the surface, give us a glimpse into Frank’s way of seeing and working. Each frame offers a snippet of urban life, a fleeting moment captured from the window of a bus. Some frames are blurry, some are tilted, but all of them feel immediate and authentic. Look at the red and green outlines Frank has scrawled onto the piece, the marks are so physical! It feels like he’s having a conversation with himself, editing and selecting. It reminds me a little of Gerhard Richter’s ‘Atlas’ project, in the way it gathers together a collection of images to create a kind of visual archive. Both artists are interested in the messy, imperfect nature of image-making, and the way that process can reveal as much as the final product.