City of London 10/Lines of My Hand 42 1951

Curator: Robert Frank’s “City of London 10/Lines of My Hand 42,” captured in 1951, feels like a secret glimpse into the artist's process. It is a work of modernist street photography and also a gelatin silver print. Editor: It feels raw, immediate… slightly mournful, even. I am getting an oddly intimate vibe from these strips of negatives, all organized and marked in that black background. It speaks to the unseen labor in making photographs. Curator: Precisely! It's a wonderful look at the way Frank handled materials: not precious, but functional. I wonder if it meant for him more as a functional object with the purpose of evaluation or it might have transcended into something with a life of its own… Editor: I like how you framed it. I tend to focus on the economic and labor implications of photography: silver as commodity, darkroom as factory…and then I think what these darkroom notations meant and how they related to how Frank would eventually print his photographs. Curator: Indeed. Here we find Frank marking the strips: notice the bold "10" written above some strips. They almost mimic graffiti—it disrupts and underscores the idea that this is purely utilitarian and technical. But still the marks remain so clear in this reproduction! Editor: Right, so thinking about how many prints Frank likely made from those rolls: How many did he print himself? What were the print sizes? Paper type? Selenium toned? Not toned? All these things, seemingly small, but really change the economics of the art. Also, each roll bears the brand Eastman and Y Film. The brand is integral, just as is labor. Curator: Well, looking back at the selected frames, particularly those in the lower strips with figures illuminated in these nocturnal street scenes... There’s something about the city captured as an empty stage waiting for meaning that continues to move me! Editor: To consider, what remains elusive, but still present in this work? For me it becomes, simply, the role of manual production!