"Marilyn Dead," family--Wellfleet 9 1962

Robert Frank made this photographic contact sheet called "Marilyn Dead," family--Wellfleet 9" sometime during his lifetime. The monochrome images have a stark, grainy quality – typical of Frank’s style, but also a testament to the process of analog photography itself. It's really about the nature of capturing a moment. The physical layout of the film strips lets you see how a photographer works. There are multiple shots on a roll, some similar, some different, all trying to nail… what exactly? I think there's a beauty in seeing the process laid bare. It shows how many attempts it takes to get an image that speaks, or the way images shift as someone adjusts their focus on a particular object. The strip at the bottom, where a figure on a beach reads a newspaper with Marilyn Monroe's face on it, feels especially poignant. Like a memory – fragmented, repeated, and filtered through time. Like another artist, Gerhard Richter, who blurred his paintings to make them mirror the process of how memory is formed. Ultimately, Frank's piece reminds us that art isn't about perfect representation, but about capturing fleeting moments and personal truths.