Embarkation--New York City II 1955

Here is a photographic contact sheet by Robert Frank, who lived from 1924 to 2019, called "Embarkation—New York City II." I can imagine Frank at work here, framing a shot, moving his camera, feeling the light, then advancing the film, and just, shooting again. The whole roll becomes a kind of choreography! But I am left wondering what’s on his mind. Maybe he's thinking about the way people huddle together before a long journey. Or maybe he's feeling the energy of New York City and trying to capture the chaos and beauty of it. The borders of each frame, the sprocket holes, become part of the image. It’s like a drawing, with all the evidence of how it was made right there on the surface. I’m thinking about other artists who use chance and process in their work, like Gerhard Richter, whose paintings sometimes look like they were made by machines. Ultimately, this piece feels like a kind of map of a moment, a record of an experience, an embodiment of how one artist saw the world.