Eleventh Street, 1965
Unique "Composite" of seven mounted gelatin silver prints
Image: 25 × 35 ½ inches
Mount: 34 × 44 inches
July 13, 2026
This image looks like it could be the graphic score for a piece of Minimalist music as much as a work of photography. Ray Metzker pushed the boundaries of street photography in so many ways that it can be hard to know where to begin when describing his work. One of his key innovations was treating the entire roll of film as a continuous image. We see that here in the recurrence of an optician's shop window, where the same scene repeats with minor variations as different pedestrians pass through the frame. A closer look reveals that, rather than capturing a sequence of individual shots, Metzker interwove his frames by partially rewinding the film roll between shots so that each exposure intermingles with the next. In the setup for this sequence, Metzker was shooting at a slight angle from across the street; the resulting perspectival tilt gives a feeling of velocity to the continuous, rhythmic image.
