Family, New Year's Eve--New York City I 1953 - 1954

This photographic artwork, "Family, New Year's Eve—New York City I," was made by Robert Frank, but we don't know exactly when. What strikes me is how Frank presents the photographic process itself. It’s raw, like a painter laying bare their brushstrokes, leaving the process exposed. The composition is so compelling. It's just the film strips, untouched, mounted on paper. You see all the sprocket holes, those little squares that pull the film through the camera. It’s like he's saying, "Here it is, the whole thing, the before and after." I love that. It demystifies photography, showing it's not about capturing a perfect moment but about the act of seeing, selecting, and arranging. Those ghostly images, the snippets of New Year's Eve revelry, feel so fleeting. In a way it reminds me of Ed Ruscha's serial photography of buildings, but Frank is dealing in human stories, capturing fragments of life in the city. It’s about the ephemeral nature of experience, the way memories fade and shift over time.