Farmer at market outside Zurich--40 Fotos 1941 - 1945

Robert Frank made this photograph, Farmer at market outside Zurich, with a camera, of course, somewhere around Zurich. You can see the farmer and his mate hoisting a pig carcass. Frank is interested in capturing the realness of what it means to live, of being, and he shares this interest with a lot of artists. The men, their faces, the pig, the box, they’re all kind of roughly hewn with a strong, immediate presence, all rendered in this grainy, black and white tonality, and somehow the artist has the bravery to just be with this image, and not try to pretty it up. It reminds me of Van Gogh, who also had that bravery of vision. It can be hard to look at art sometimes. But isn’t it more difficult not to?