Guggenheim 88/Ford 11--Detroit 1955

Robert Frank made this contact sheet, Guggenheim 88/Ford 11--Detroit, by exposing photographic paper to strips of black and white 35mm film negatives. It's a process that reveals everything, like the artist opening up his studio to us. Here, the texture isn't in the material itself but in the grit of the images, the high contrast and blurriness of the shot. It's all about how Frank physically moved through the world, observing and recording moments, rather than staging them. Look at the lines of the sprocket holes and the numbers running down the sides of the images, these create a linear rhythm through the piece. They draw your eye down the work, so that you start to read the individual images. This makes me think of Ed Ruscha and his use of seriality. Both artists capture something about the world through repetition and subtle variation, presenting an open-ended commentary on culture. There are no definitive answers here, just a way of seeing and feeling.