New York City 2 c. 1952 - 1953

This is Robert Frank's 'New York City 2', a monochrome silver gelatin print. What I see in this work is a series of still moments, a contact sheet documenting city life. It's kind of like a storyboard. Each frame captures a slice of urban reality, like frames in a movie – glimpses of crowds, streets, and buildings. I can almost imagine Frank walking around, camera in hand, looking for a specific moment. Snap, snap, snap - catching reality as it unfolds. I feel the quick decisions he had to make. The composition, the light, the people... it was all fleeting. And isn't it wonderful how artists have this conversation across time, inspiring each other’s creativity? Robert Frank, like all of us, wasn't working in isolation. There’s a connection between the still and the moving, the captured moment and the unfolding narrative. Like painting, photography is a form of embodied expression. It embraces ambiguity, and allows for multiple interpretations.