Paris 31A 1949 - 1950

Robert Frank created this contact sheet, Paris 31A, in black and white. I imagine him walking around Paris with his camera. It’s cool to see the strip of negatives, a bit like finding someone's sketches – a kind of raw, first-thought visual. The repetition of images makes me think about time, and how a single moment can be broken down into many frames. What was Frank thinking as he snapped these pictures? What caught his eye? A fleeting expression, the way light hit a building? I see echoes of Walker Evans in the documentary style, but with a looser, more personal feel. Frank reminds us that photography, like painting, is about seeing and feeling. It's about freezing a moment, but also about the act of choosing what to capture. Ultimately, it’s a record of his looking, a trace of his experience in the world. And now we get to share in that, piecing together our own stories from his fragmented vision.