Guggenheim 621--San Francisco c. 1956

Robert Frank made this photographic contact sheet, Guggenheim 621--San Francisco, which brings together multiple images on one surface. There’s something about the repetition here that feels painterly, like a Gerhard Richter, maybe. He repeats and alters, searching for the right configuration, the right way to see. I feel his searching in the composition, his need to find the truth of the image. I wonder, what was it like for Frank to walk the streets of San Francisco, finding these moments, these ordinary scenes? You can see he was interested in capturing groups of people, lines of men in suits, their backs turned, walking away. It feels so melancholy, like a parade of ghosts. The high contrast, the graininess, the film itself, it's all part of the message. He wasn’t trying to pretty things up, but looking for the beauty in the everyday. It is this interest, and Frank's need to experiment and test the limits of the photographic image, that makes his photography so appealing.