Subway no number 1955

Robert Frank created this photograph, a contact sheet actually, of the subway, sometime in the mid twentieth century. It's a document of process, the artist thinking, editing. What strikes me here is how Frank embraces the accidental. The red ‘X’ mark that cancels out a run of images – what does that mean? Is it a mistake, or is it another layer, a deliberate act of defacement? It reminds me of Cy Twombly’s scrawls, or even the way Rauschenberg would erase De Kooning. The beauty of the contact sheet is that it’s not precious. It shows you everything, the good and the bad. It's like he's saying, "Here's my raw material, make of it what you will." That feels generous, like he’s inviting us into his process. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It's a reminder that art is an ongoing conversation, a back-and-forth between the artist, the medium, and the viewer. It's never really finished, is it?