Drug store counter--Burbank, California 1956

Robert Frank snapped this photograph, “Drug store counter—Burbank, California,” with his camera, freezing a moment in time. It's like a little black and white stage, right? I wonder what it was like for Frank to wander into that drugstore, camera in hand. He sees this man, the magazine, the counter... click. He's got it. It’s as though he is pulling from some kind of deeper source, almost like a dream. The composition's got this casual, off-the-cuff feeling, but it’s actually super deliberate. All that blurry stuff in the foreground, the man’s gaze, the woman in the magazine, the signs in the background… it’s all part of this bigger picture, the American picture. He must have been thinking about Walker Evans and all the photographers who came before him, but doing his own thing, his own way. Photography and painting; we are always in conversation.