Newburgh, New York VIII 1955

This is a photographic contact sheet titled ‘Newburgh, New York VIII’ by Robert Frank. It shows the artist's selection process, which I find as revealing as the final images themselves. I imagine Frank in his darkroom, hunched over these strips of film, a magnifying glass in hand. He’s looking at moments, not just images, trying to decide which one holds some kind of truth. The red marks around some of the frames show us what caught his eye, what he thought was worth sharing. The unchosen images, still there on the sheet, are like ghosts, hinting at other possibilities, other stories. The final image selected, or not, is about his experience of the world and how he translates that through the click of a button. Like a painter standing in front of a canvas, each of these frames offers an alternative way of seeing, each one a new embodied expression.