11th Street story 67/People You Don't See 13 1951

Curator: This gelatin silver print, created in 1951, comes to us from the lens of Robert Frank, the Swiss-American photographer. It’s titled “11th Street story 67/People You Don't See 13.” Editor: It's like peeking into a forgotten world, isn't it? All those frames, compressed... evokes this kind of time warp, a fragmented memory. You get the sense of a place bustling with life but seen through a veil. Sort of a dream of mid-century New York, all shadows and angles. Curator: Indeed, Robert Frank often captured a specific type of post-war American landscape, turning toward urban experience. What do you see as the most compelling symbol on display here? Editor: It has to be the continuous roll of film. The way each frame repeats and refracts the previous one suggests both fleeting moments and cyclical time. The cars themselves feel very symbolic too... they tell of aspiration and societal progress, of course, but perhaps also, of our impermanence? Curator: Fascinating point. These vehicles, those pedestrians almost ghosts in between the massive buildings –they speak to the modern individual struggling within the machine of progress. Note also, the use of contact-print: the images bleed over, there's no clear border or end to this vision of urban life. Editor: It makes you feel like there is this endless stream of anonymous people fading into the scenery, right? As you're trying to make them the point, they keep sliding away. You get a similar thing with pop art and action painting, movements where ordinary things became abstract when seen as a mass, like Frank did. But his photography makes this much more visceral and alive. Curator: I find that so accurate – that blend of everyday life with an almost invisible alienation is powerful in Frank’s work. Editor: Definitely. Well, now I'm feeling a little haunted, but grateful for the glimpse. Curator: Agreed. A beautiful haunting indeed.