Hollywood 33 1958

Robert Frank’s ‘Hollywood 33’ is a gelatin silver print, a collection of moments captured and arranged with the eye of a poet. The monochrome palette gives a timeless quality, emphasizing the textures and contrasts within each frame. The physicality of the medium is palpable; you can almost smell the developing chemicals. Look at the grainy texture, the way light and shadow play across each image. There's a sequence there, repeated frames of a figure in what seems like a garden, the same figure repeated in different sequences in the rows above. This reminds me of the work of Gerhard Richter, who used photography to create a distance between the subject and the painting. Frank invites us to see the world through his lens, a world that's both intimate and detached. Photography isn't about perfect reproduction but about exploring the myriad ways we interpret what we see, and the stories we tell ourselves in the process.