Man pumping gas in rain--San Francisco 1956

Robert Frank made this black and white photograph, “Man pumping gas in rain--San Francisco,” sometime in the mid-20th century. It is a loose, unpolished picture, born from the dark murk of a rainy night. It feels like a fragment, or a detail, as though it was the off-cut from a bigger picture. The beauty of the image lies in its granular texture, the blacks almost swallowing everything in their path. There’s a slickness to the surfaces, the sheen of rain on asphalt, the water beaded on the gas attendant's rain coat. The lack of clarity in the composition, the blurred headlights and dark tones all push towards abstraction, a painting made with light. The composition has a casual, happenstance quality that belies the carefully structured prints of someone like Walker Evans. It makes me think of Garry Winogrand, who said that he photographed things to see what they would look like photographed. Like Winogrand, Frank’s vision embraces ambiguity and chance, inviting us to look a little harder, to see what emerges from the gloom.