Guggenheim 570--Los Angeles 1955 - 1956

Robert Frank’s “Guggenheim 570--Los Angeles” captures a sequence of moments, a little like the frames of a film reel, or, if you like, like a storyboard for a film. What was Frank thinking as he clicked through each frame? Maybe he was chasing something elusive, the perfect expression on the kid's face or the way the sunlight hit the scene. And what about the edit marks? The orange marker circles on certain frames suggest that the image-maker can decide later what to select and what to discard. How do those choices shift the narrative? It makes me think about what painters do, layering, excavating, trying to find their way, sometimes blindly, and what ends up being the final image is only what we see on the surface. Frank was always playing with the notion of "the decisive moment," yet what’s wonderful about him is also all the messy, blurry, accidental stuff. It’s like he’s saying, hey, life isn’t perfect, and neither is art.