Horse show opening 5 1954

This is Robert Frank’s ‘Horse show opening 5,’ a photo on paper, and what a cool photograph to think about! You know, looking at this film strip, I feel like I’m riffling through someone’s memories. Frank's contact sheet shows us the sequence, each frame a little peek into this staged world, horse show opening night, people dressed up. It’s about performance, right? Not just the horses, but the audience too. They are performing wealth, or status. I imagine Frank, weaving through the crowd, trying to capture something real amidst all this artifice. There's something beautiful in the way he's looking, and the way he is circling frames with red pen, like little flags planting themselves in the dirt. Maybe this image connects to Frank's broader interest in capturing the gritty, unvarnished reality of American life, or the life lived by ordinary people. Artists are constantly in dialogue, so it makes me think of photographers like Garry Winogrand. He's not presenting us with a polished narrative, but fragments, moments, leaving room for us to fill in the blanks. In the end, it’s the incomplete, the imperfect, that often speaks the loudest, and that's what makes us feel alive.