Paris 49B 1951 - 1952

Robert Frank's "Paris 49B" is a photographic contact sheet, raw and direct, like a painter's preliminary sketch. The greyscale images, strips of moments captured on film, remind me of artmaking as a process, where the journey is as important as the destination. The texture here is palpable; you can almost feel the grain of the film, the developer's chemicals. Blue marks annotate the sheet; these direct our eyes and highlight certain images. The '49' scrawled across the top, this feels personal, like a code between the artist and the work. My eye is drawn to the bottom row, to those trees in the last frame. Their starkness against the sky recalls the bold strokes of a Franz Kline painting. Frank's work, like much great art, invites multiple interpretations, resists easy categorization. His influence echoes through artists like Nan Goldin, who also captured everyday life. It is a reminder that art is not about answers, but about asking better questions.