Guggenheim 769--Wannamaker fire, 10th Street, New York City 1956

Editor: Here we have Robert Frank's "Guggenheim 769--Wannamaker fire, 10th Street, New York City," a gelatin silver print from 1956. The work shows strips of the photographer’s film negatives. There's something incredibly raw about seeing the artist’s process so plainly laid out, like we're peeking behind the curtain. What speaks to you most when you look at this, given his raw approach to production? Curator: The materiality is precisely where I'd start. This isn't a polished, singular image, but the uncut film, revealing the labor involved in creating photographs. Each frame, each strip, represents a moment, a choice, a possible narrative. It underscores the active selection process in Frank's work. This presentation moves past celebrating the ‘art’ itself. Consider the role of the darkroom, the chemicals, the printing process, all of which are normally obscured from the final, presented image. Editor: So, it's less about the individual images and more about the whole photographic endeavor? The darkroom practice is what gives us these photos as material for analysis. Curator: Exactly. Think about the economic conditions of photography at the time. What was it like to produce photographs professionally? Who had access to the materials, and what narratives did their access permit them to create, compared to the subjects of his lens? Editor: That makes a lot of sense. Seeing the filmstrip as a whole disrupts the idea of the singular, perfect shot and forces us to consider the context of its making and distribution, rather than just its aesthetic merit. Curator: And what might this say about consumer culture, that here, even a fire becomes subject matter? Editor: That's a good point! By showing us the outtakes and the process, Frank turns us into active viewers who have to think about production and value rather than passive consumers of an image. Thanks! Curator: A pleasure!