NEW YORK BUS 1958

Before devoting his energies to film-making, Frank completed a final series of photographs, each taken from the window of a bus as it drove through the streets of New York. He later wrote: 'When I selected the pictures and put them together I knew and I felt that I had come to the end of a chapter. And in it was the beginning of something new...'

FROM THE BUS, NEW YORK 1958
Collection of the artist, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Each image is caught in passing, a chance arrangement of figures that appears for a moment in front of Frank's camera before the bus moves on. They suggest a decision to abandon overall control of the image, putting himself at the mercy of circumstances. In many ways, these photographs anticipate the more free-form aesthetic of Frank's films. As the art director Lou Silverstein (who worked with Frank at the New York Times) commented, 'These pictures were a deliberate attempt to see how far you can go before you've destroyed the canvas. He had broken every rule in the business.'

Frank himself summed them up: 'The Bus carries me thru the City, I look out the window, I look at the people on the street, the Sun and the Traffic Lights. It has to do with desperation and endurance - I have always felt about living in New York. Compassion and probably some understanding for New York's Concrete and its people, walking... waiting... standing... holding hands... the summer of 1958.'

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