Guggenheim 541--Pasadena and Los Angeles 1955 - 1956

This is a contact sheet, or maybe part of one, by Robert Frank, of images taken in Pasadena and Los Angeles. It's that beautiful, grainy black and white film. It's a process, right? Shooting, developing, printing – each stage with its own accidents and chances for something new to emerge. Look at how Frank uses the edge of the film to frame the images, not just as individual shots, but as a whole, like a story unfolding. You can see a repeated motif of cars, almost like characters. I'm drawn to the image of the woman in the car, her face framed by the window. It feels intimate, almost like a glimpse into a private moment, repeated and replayed along the film strip. The marks and scratches on the film feel like whispers of time, reminding us of the impermanence of the moment, like a Gerhard Richter painting. Frank's work always feels like an open question, inviting us to find our own way through the fragmented narratives he presents.