Subway no number 1955

Robert Frank made this photographic contact sheet called Subway no number sometime during his life using film. There is something really poetic about seeing a photographer’s process laid bare like this – the many attempts it takes to get the shot, the editing eye choosing what to show the world. I imagine Frank down in the subway, day after day, trying to capture the feel of being human in transit. What was it like to be him? What was he looking for? Each frame is a little world, a gesture, a fleeting moment. The grainy texture, the stark contrast – it's all so New York, so real. And that red X, marking a frame as no good. It’s so decisive, final. I wonder if it pained Frank to make that mark. Painters and photographers: we’re all just trying to capture the world as we see it, frame by frame, and in doing so, we are in constant conversation.