11th Street story 19 1951

This is Robert Frank’s "11th Street story 19," a photographic contact sheet made in the mid to late 20th Century. Frank, like all of us artists, was interested in artmaking as a process. Here, the process is fully on display: the image is a document of other images. This piece has everything to do with the material, the contrast of the monochrome and the texture of the film. It is not concealed or obscured, but very physical. You can see the sprocket holes running along the top and bottom of each strip. My eye is drawn to the frames with the number 19 scrawled across them in what looks like a marker. It’s a casual mark, but somehow it becomes the focal point of the entire piece. Frank was a part of the same artistic milieu as many painters in New York in the 50's. I feel like he was kindred spirit with abstract expressionists like de Kooning, both artists sought to capture the energy of modern life with new approaches to mark making.