Paris 37A 1949 - 1950

Robert Frank shot this photograph, Paris 37A, sometime in his life, but we don't have a specific date for it. What you’re looking at is not a single image but a contact sheet. It's like seeing the artist's thought process laid bare. I imagine Frank in the darkroom, hunched over, watching these images emerge, and making his selections. There's a raw, immediate quality to the work. A feeling like you’re looking at the world through his eyes. It is a series of vignettes of Parisian life—street scenes, portraits, glimpses of daily life. Each frame offers a little narrative, a fragment of a larger story. You can imagine what it might have been like for Frank, walking the streets of Paris, camera in hand, trying to capture the essence of a place, a moment, a feeling. It reminds me that making art is all about this process, a continuous exchange across time, influencing and spurring on each other's imaginations.