San Gennaro festival--New York City no number 1951

Robert Frank made this contact sheet, San Gennaro festival--New York City, using photography, and I’m intrigued by how it captures a moment in time. A contact sheet shows you the artist’s process. The repetition of images, little windows into the festival, gives a sense of rhythm, like frames in a film. The high contrast, the way the light and dark areas pop, creates a raw, immediate feel, like a memory surfacing. The children are the focus, so many faces of kids! I see some marks made by hand, cutting through the image. Frank’s contact sheets and photographs were part of a broader movement in art, moving away from the preciousness of the artwork and embracing chance, process, and the everyday. Like Garry Winogrand who made so many photographs, Frank was interested in making art more immediate, more real, and more reflective of life as it is lived. I think there is some real magic in that.