Willem de Kooning 9 1961

This is Robert Frank's "Willem de Kooning 9", a contact sheet of black and white photographs. It's all about process, not just De Kooning’s but Frank’s, too. The whole thing is like a filmstrip, a record of looking. It's gritty, immediate. Each frame is a little moment, a slightly different angle, a new detail revealed, and this really brings out the materiality of the medium. Notice how some frames are dark, overexposed, and how the sequence moves up, down, backwards and forwards. Look at the 3rd frame on the fifth row, where De Kooning is close to the camera. The contrast and graininess creates a sort of visual noise, but also adds to this sense of intimacy, like we’re right there in the studio with them. Think about how this compares to Warhol’s Polaroids, also a recording of a moment, but with a very different aesthetic.