Yellow Flower--Like a Dog 1992

Robert Frank made this photo-collage, "Yellow Flower--Like a Dog," by layering images and text, kinda like visual poetry. The palette is mostly monochrome, giving it this stark, almost melancholic feel. I imagine Frank in the darkroom, pushing the chemicals, letting the images blur and bleed together, searching for the emotion in the emulsion. It reminds me of Cy Twombly's scrawled surfaces, that same sense of raw, unfiltered expression. There are flowers on either side but the titular flower, "yellow," like a dog, is not so flowery. I think Frank's use of text, scratched and scribbled across the images, adds another layer of meaning, or maybe it obscures it further, that's kind of the point, right? It's a way of seeing, of feeling, that’s less about clarity and more about… the vibe. And aren't we all just trying to find our vibe, one photo, one word, one brushstroke at a time?