23rd Street--New York City I 1953

Robert Frank created this gelatin silver print, 23rd Street--New York City I, by arranging strips of negatives on a sheet. There's something about seeing all these frames together that makes me think about the filmic process, a story unfolding, even if we don't know exactly what it is. The images themselves are these slices of everyday life, a park, people, some benches, a kind of casual catalogue. It feels like he is saying, "this, and this, and this too," and then calling it art. The texture of the film itself, with its perforations and slightly uneven edges, adds another layer of reality. It reminds me a little bit of Ed Ruscha's books, like "Every Building on the Sunset Strip," the way that he turned documentation into something poetic. With Frank, it's like he's inviting us to look at the world as a collection of moments, each one as valid and interesting as the next. Art isn't about grand statements, but about seeing what's already there.