Subway 13 1955

This is Robert Frank’s “Subway 13,” a photogram of small black and white images printed on a single sheet. Frank was really interested in the process, the feel, the look of ordinary life. Here we see a bunch of frames documenting the NYC subway. There’s this sense of time and place, this particular moment captured in each frame. And the quality of the light, the graininess of the film, makes it even more palpable. You can almost feel the motion of the train, the press of bodies, the particular feeling of being underground. I love the way Frank embraces this rawness. This piece feels like a precursor to the work of someone like Nan Goldin, who also wasn’t afraid to show life as it is lived, messy, unpredictable, and imperfect. It's like Frank is saying, hey, this is life, this is what it looks like, and it’s beautiful in its own way. And there’s no one right way to interpret it.