Goodbye Mr. Brodovitch I'm Leaving New York, December 23rd, 1971 OK? 1971

Curator: Immediately, I feel overwhelmed. It's this avalanche of tiny, repetitive frames, a bit dizzying. It’s chaotic and strangely…sad? Editor: This is "Goodbye Mr. Brodovitch I'm Leaving New York, December 23rd, 1971 OK?" by Robert Frank, a gelatin-silver print made in, well, 1971. What you're sensing is potent stuff. He seems to be reflecting on ending one chapter, anticipating…something. Curator: Brodovitch! Alexey Brodovitch was this legendary art director. These repetitive frames…they almost look like strips of film, like film editing contact sheets or storyboards! It is sad—it’s a visual goodbye. It feels abrupt, unfinished, yet so deliberate. The man’s pulling up stakes! Editor: Exactly. Look at the words interjected. They disrupt the visuals, words and single frame photos repeat: CANADA and then YOU or WORDS. Then, these clocks keep reappearing throughout, along with a haunting single face… Do they signify some kind of urgency, an attempt to arrest time maybe, before he… leaves? Curator: That's precisely what is getting me, right here... He's leaving his creative father figure. And all of those…CANADA banners? Is that the next step? Those words: they're not grand declarations, they are really conversational. "Okay?" I mean, the dude even asks, he doubts even this goodbye… Editor: Brodovitch ran *Harper’s Bazaar*. He promoted sharp photography, experimentation. It feels that Robert Frank’s laying bare this creative dialogue to the viewer and bidding adieu. The starkness in printing almost underlines its urgency—this is about letting go of mentorship, of a creative space…The photograph reads as cultural artifact now, though; you wonder, what mark this person left that merited it as worthy of recording. Curator: So it really becomes an homage and perhaps… the pressure that such an inheritance conveys... Frank, as an icon of that style of gritty photography…was free to leave that position behind. Brodovitch, the guru, is held within that position forever. He can’t move on. The visual weight is immense…and Robert? The genius went off to experiment even more freely! That little “OK?” feels lighter now, an opening, not an ending. Editor: What initially seems fragmented resolves into a meditation on influence, place, and saying farewell—though even that act, saying farewell to influence, comes at a great creative, spiritual and existential price. Curator: Yes. The freedom of new beginnings can sometimes begin from the acknowledgement that those beginnings are now needed more. This isn't goodbye to place; it's a launch, via snapshot, into parts unknown.