Subway no number 1955

Robert Frank made this photographic work, *Subway no number*, sometime during his life, using photographic processes. It's a whole roll of film, a sequence that shows you how the photographer's mind works, the kind of thing that usually gets edited out, or ends up on the cutting room floor. I am drawn to the third row, second image, the way he captures a private interaction between people in a public space. How he noticed this moment, this connection, and isolated it in the frame. Like painting, photography is a process of selection, deciding what to include and what to exclude, and what to emphasize through focus, lighting, and composition. Frank's work reminds me of Walker Evans, another photographer who captured the everyday lives of Americans. But Frank's work has a more raw, immediate feel to it, a kind of restlessness that speaks to the transient nature of modern life. It’s full of feeling.