New York City no number 1957

This is a contact sheet by Robert Frank, a series of small photographs printed together, likely made in New York City. The nature of Frank's process is on full display here. It’s about capturing a sequence, a moment unfolding, not about the precious singular image. The repetition and slight variations in each frame create a rhythm, a visual stutter. Look at the fifth row. Rows of cars, each photographed in sequence, but with slight shifts in the angle. It’s a mundane subject, a parking lot, but Frank transforms it through his obsessive attention, turning it into a meditation on repetition, movement, and the fleeting nature of reality. You can see how one shot informs the next. Frank reminds me a little of Garry Winogrand, another street photographer obsessed with capturing the frenetic energy of city life. Like Winogrand, Frank embraces the messy, the imperfect, the accidental. For both, art is a conversation.