Bars no number 1955

Robert Frank made this photogram called 'Bars no number' using gelatin silver on paper. It’s a series of contact sheets, and it makes me think about the process of editing a film. I imagine Frank in his darkroom, hunched over these strips, maybe with a magnifying glass, his eyes moving across the images like a painter assessing a canvas. He’s searching for something, a certain moment, a particular feeling. You can see the images he didn’t choose, crossed out with a red wax pencil, a gesture that feels so final, so decisive. I wonder what he was thinking as he marked them out? What stories do these frames hold? That red wax pencil—it reminds me of the way painters use tape to mask off areas of a canvas, defining edges, creating boundaries. It's about setting limits and making choices. Maybe the darkroom is his studio, a space where he’s wrestling with light and shadow, just like I wrestle with color and form. There’s a real kinship between photographers and painters, both of us trying to capture something elusive.