Broadway no number 1957

Robert Frank made “Broadway no number” with photography, with multiple strips of black and white film laid down on a black surface. Look at this layout, almost like a poem, the strips arranged as if words on a page. I’m thinking about Frank walking down Broadway, the city at night, those glowing streetlights and shop windows, and he’s snapping away, capturing these moments, trying to figure out what it all means. I wonder what he was thinking, this photographer wandering the streets with his camera, a tool for seeing, for making sense of the world. Each frame a little puzzle piece, capturing the energy of the street but never resolving into one complete image, it's fragmented, chaotic. He is looking and looking. Think about other photographers who wander the streets. Garry Winogrand or Helen Levitt. There's something about the way they see, a kind of searching, that reminds me of how painters work. We are all looking and experimenting. Art is always answering art.