11th Street story 9 1951

Editor: Here we have Robert Frank’s “11th Street story 9” from 1951, a gelatin-silver print and collage. It's made up of strips of photographs... it's interesting to see them all laid out like this. It really emphasizes the medium itself, the raw film. What's your take on this work? Curator: It's fascinating, isn't it? Looking at the physical film strips, the gelatin silver print—we’re reminded of the labor inherent in image production. This wasn’t a digital process. Each frame represents a deliberate act, from setting the exposure to the darkroom processing. Consider the materials: silver, gelatin, chemicals. Each with its own history of extraction and industrial manufacture. How does the material presence of these strips influence your understanding of street photography? Editor: I see what you mean. It really breaks down the myth of photography as just capturing reality, right? It shows the intervention and the actual making of the image. Does the arrangement of these contact sheets on a larger support shift how you would categorize this piece, conceptually? Curator: Precisely! Frank moves it from the realm of pure documentation toward a constructed narrative, even an object. It pushes against boundaries. We see what is included, and the evidence of images that are excluded. It raises questions: who selected which frames, and based on what agenda or market pressure? By displaying it as a grid collage, he's directly challenging traditional ideas about art's materials and production, blurring those traditional categories. Editor: That makes a lot of sense. It’s less about what's depicted, more about *how* it's depicted, and the physical, material processes behind it. Curator: Exactly. Looking at the choices Frank made in assembling this collage brings the labor and the social dimensions to the forefront. Editor: Thanks! I’ll never look at street photography the same way. I appreciate understanding this image not only by what I am looking at, but what Robert Frank was making.