Wales 6 1953

Robert Frank made this photographic collage, Wales 6, by cutting, pasting and marking directly onto the surface of the photographic paper. The photos are presented as strips of negatives, printed in black and white with superimposed marks in pen and ink, in red, white and blue. Frank’s process is laid bare. He isn’t trying to hide how he created the artwork. The texture of the piece comes from the physical layering of the different photos, their perforations visible, and the various marks on the surface. Look at the large number 6 drawn in red pen at the left of the image – this feels arbitrary, like the kind of doodle you might make absentmindedly when talking on the phone. This casual mark emphasizes the materiality of the piece. Frank was a master of the snapshot aesthetic, he manages to capture something accidental and ephemeral. Like other photographic artists such as Gerhard Richter, his work has had a huge influence on painting, offering a model of how art can embrace chance and ambiguity.