34th Street, New York City 1947

Robert Frank made this gelatin silver print, "34th Street, New York City," and just look at that line, that single white line against all that grey! You can just imagine him, Robert Frank, peering through the viewfinder, waiting for someone to walk into his shot. I’m thinking, maybe he’s watching how the city dictates our movements. The sidewalks are crowded, but the street, sliced by that stark stripe, has this eerie emptiness. Did he feel sympathy for the lone figure navigating the city, so alone? There’s a raw, graphic quality to it all. The contrast is sharp, not a lot of mid-tones. And the grain, that texture, it's like a mood in itself. It makes me think of other photographers, like Garry Winogrand or Diane Arbus, also capturing New York's pulse with this kind of directness. That single, stark line is the genius of the image. It just cuts through the picture plane and through the image’s content: a metaphor for the artist’s cut, slicing into reality.