Westlake, California 1956

Robert Frank snapped this photograph, Westlake, California, sometime during his life with a camera. What grabs me is how he’s made something out of nothing, the nothing of suburbia. The gray scale does a lot of work here; it's almost like painting with light and shadow. The composition, with its rooftops and telephone pole, feels both accidental and deliberate, a bit like life itself. There's this big dark triangle in the foreground, maybe a fence, cutting into the scene. It's awkward, but that's what makes it interesting, right? It’s about framing, choosing, deciding what to leave in and what to cut out. Frank’s work reminds me a bit of Walker Evans, but grittier, more personal. It’s like he's saying, “Here it is, folks. This is what it looks like.” And maybe, just maybe, that's enough.