Guggenheim 567--Los Angeles 1955 - 1956

This is Guggenheim 567--Los Angeles by Robert Frank, a contact sheet with black and white photographs, made sometime during his life. The contact sheet is such a great thing; a place to see all the photos together, like pages from a sketchbook. I love seeing a strip of film, like a timeline of moments; Frank would have seen all of this, deciding what to print, crop, or discard. Look at the top row. The upside down images ask questions about the right way to see things, suggesting the world is always turning, changing its perspective. The surface is rich with information: the sprocket holes, frame numbers, and handwritten notations along the borders. These give the photograph an indexical quality, not just an image but a document of the photographic process. It's like the film strip becomes a drawing! It makes me think of Ed Ruscha's artist books, with serial imagery, and the way he used the grid to present different views of Los Angeles. The beauty of photography, like painting, is that it can never truly represent reality, but always offers a perspective.