Peru, no number 1948

This work, by Robert Frank, comprises a contact sheet of photographs taken in Peru, probably dating to the late 1940s or early 1950s. A contact sheet is a fascinating thing – purely utilitarian, it is what emerges when a roll of film is exposed directly onto a sheet of photographic paper. As such, it’s a record of a photographer at work, a collection of outtakes and near misses alongside the images that they may have chosen to print and circulate. We get an intimate glimpse of the artist’s process. Consider, too, what Frank is showing us. Not landmarks or staged portraits, but glimpses of everyday life. Though he is a visitor, he seems to be trying to get beyond the surface of this place. In this way, the contact sheet format, usually a means to an end, becomes the very substance of the work. The labor of seeing, recording, and remembering.