Butcher shop window, Paris 1951

Robert Frank made this photograph, "Butcher shop window, Paris," sometime in the mid-20th century. It’s a small, black and white photograph, grainy, immediate, like a snapshot. The composition is built around layers of transparency and reflection, like an exercise in seeing, the glassy surface of the window reflecting light and obscuring what’s behind it. The row of prepared animal heads suspended behind the glass look both familiar and strange, confronting us with a part of life we often choose to ignore. Our emotional experience is shaped by the contrast between the stark reality of the butcher shop and the softened lens through which we view it. The entire image is a kind of complex filter, evoking the work of Eugène Atget, another photographer who cataloged the changing face of Paris. But in the end, art, like a good recipe, invites endless variations, and reminds us that there's always something new to see.