Terrace and park--New York City no number 1954

This is a photographic work on paper by Robert Frank, called Terrace and park--New York City no number, but it could be any city, really. It looks like he’s put together strips of film, contact sheets maybe, to make a new image. What’s so interesting to me about Frank, and photography in general, is this tension between being in the world and observing the world. It’s like a dance, a negotiation. How close do you get? How far do you stand back? What do you choose to include, and what gets cropped out? I can imagine him walking around the park, camera in hand, thinking about all these things. It's a sunny day and he notices a family having a picnic. He raises his camera and starts snapping away, capturing a series of moments, each slightly different from the last. Then, later, he's back in his studio, surrounded by these film strips. He starts arranging them, cutting and pasting, trying to make sense of what he's seen. It's like he's trying to reconstruct the experience of being there. Painters do this too, constantly re-evaluating, shifting things around. It is all about making sense of being alive, and relating to the world.