Outdoor café at night, Paris 1951

This is Robert Frank's photograph, "Outdoor café at night, Paris," printed on a sheet of paper. The tones are subtle, verging into abstraction. It’s all about mood and the feeling of a place, rather than a detailed description. Look at the way the light seems to bleed into the image. There's a sense of softness, a bit like memory blurring the edges of what we see. The wet pavement is like a dark mirror, reflecting and distorting the world above. The figure sitting in the café seems lost in thought, almost swallowed by the night. Frank's photograph reminds me of Edward Hopper, another master of mood. But while Hopper's paintings are precise and deliberate, Frank's photograph feels more like a fleeting moment, a snatch of reality caught on the fly. It's that sense of immediacy, of life unfolding in all its messy glory, that makes this photograph so compelling.