11th Street story 14 1951

This is Robert Frank's '11th Street story 14,' a photograph showing two strips of black and white film. Imagine Frank wandering around, a camera slung over his shoulder. He's not posing people or staging scenes; he's capturing life as it unfolds. I love the casualness of it all. I mean, he’s not trying to be fancy or technically perfect. It feels like he is collecting moments, like little snapshots of reality that he finds interesting. The graininess, the high contrast, it gives the images a raw, urgent feel. It’s almost like he's saying, "Look at this, this is what it's like to be alive right now." And in a weird way, it connects to painting for me. It's about seeing, feeling, and trying to make sense of the world around you. Thinking about other photographers, like Helen Levitt, or painters like Philip Guston, they're all finding poetry in the everyday. Photography and painting, they’re all just different ways of seeing.