On ship--New York to Paris 2 1949

Robert Frank made this photo, On Ship--New York to Paris 2, it shows a series of black and white frames organized in rows. I see numbers, handwritten in bright red, that punctuate and interrupt the linear narrative like a painterly gesture. I can imagine Frank on that ship, his eye pressed to the camera. I wonder what it was like for him, sailing from New York to Paris, and how he captured these fleeting moments and chance encounters? There’s a rhythmic quality to the arrangement of these photographs. The film strip itself becomes a physical object, a tactile record of Frank’s journey. Looking at the emulsion, the grain, the high contrast, and the scratched surface, I can imagine that he's engaging in a creative dialogue with photographers like Walker Evans. He captures a raw, immediate glimpse into the world around him, inviting us to join him on this trip, and to ponder the relationship between travel, memory, and representation.