Wales 38 1953

Robert Frank made this contact sheet, entitled Wales 38, using black and white film. The images are presented as a series of small windows, offering us multiple views of the same scene, a group of men, maybe miners, against a bleak landscape. What strikes me is how Frank isn't trying to give us the full picture, the perfect shot. Instead, he's laying out the raw material of seeing, the outtakes and the in-betweens. Look at the handwritten “38” scrawled across the top and middle of the frame; it's like graffiti, a human touch that reminds us of the artist's presence. It brings me back to thinking about process, the physical act of taking pictures, developing film, and making choices. Frank reminds me a little of Walker Evans, both interested in a certain social realism. But Frank is rougher, more intuitive. He shows us the world as a series of fragments, always in motion.