Valencia, Spain 6 1952

Robert Frank made this photographic work, Valencia, Spain 6, using the gelatin silver process. It's a humble material, gelatin silver, and its accessibility allowed Frank to capture slices of life with remarkable immediacy. Consider the inherent qualities of the film: its capacity to freeze moments in shades of gray, its texture when printed, its physical presence as a strip of negatives. The way the images are presented, as a contact sheet, gives us a sense of Frank's editing process, like a glimpse into his darkroom. It’s about light, but also the labor required to develop and print the images. These techniques are rooted in the history of photography, a medium intertwined with social documentation. What Frank did was to bring this tradition face-to-face with the everyday, and in doing so challenge assumptions about what is worthy of being recorded. Frank used the camera to document the lives of ordinary people, their struggles, and their joys. This work reminds us that the value of an image isn't just in what it depicts, but in the skill, labor, and context that inform its making.