Butcher, Paris 1951

This photograph, Butcher, Paris, was taken by Robert Frank sometime in the middle of the last century. The composition creates an immediate and uncomfortable intimacy. The slabs of meat in the foreground almost seem to press up against the picture plane, and as a result, the viewer. There’s a real physicality to this image, you can almost smell the cold dampness of the butcher’s shop. Your eye is drawn to the butcher in the background, but he's obscured, almost crowded out by the hanging meat. The way Frank composes his shot makes the viewer complicit, almost as if we are standing in the shop with him. The limited tonal range of the monochrome print adds to the feeling of claustrophobia. Frank’s approach here reminds me a little of the painter Chaim Soutine, whose still lifes of slaughtered animals have a similar emotional intensity. There’s no one right way to look at this, but hopefully I’ve given you something to chew on.