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

Editor: Here we have Robert Frank’s "Family, New Year's Eve—New York City IV" made between 1953 and 1954; a gelatin-silver print. I’m immediately struck by its fragmented, almost cinematic quality. What does this work say to you? Curator: I see an articulation of the means of production right there on the surface. This isn’t just a photograph, but a series of frames, film strips presented to us directly. The materiality of the process is foregrounded, demanding that we consider Frank’s labor and the choices involved in selecting certain images. How do these material choices shift the viewers’ understanding? Editor: I guess it feels less like a captured moment and more like a conscious construction? It's interesting that he doesn't try to hide the film. Curator: Precisely. The raw presentation disrupts the traditional idea of the decisive moment so praised in street photography. The urban environment wasn't an innocent or a "found" landscape. This type of imagery critiques consumer culture by making clear its foundations. Where do you see the intersection of the human and material in this picture? Editor: Well, you've got the title focusing on “Family," hinting at a personal connection to what are essentially just cityscapes and street scenes. So, the connection could be in viewing New York as the ‘family’ of urbanites celebrating something… together, maybe? Curator: And what unifies or distinguishes them? Think about the social conditions represented through that period. What were the politics, the manufacturing or labor issues… reflected back on New Yorkers through gelatin-silver? Editor: Wow, okay! So by presenting it like this, the work pushes me to think beyond a simple aesthetic reading and engage with the nuts and bolts of photography, plus the larger societal forces it represents? Curator: Exactly. It urges us to reconsider what constitutes value in art and challenges our perception of the everyday urban experience and the materiality of documenting that life.