Valencia, Spain 1 1952

This is Valencia, Spain 1, by Robert Frank, and it’s a series of small black and white photographs on a film strip. When you look at it, you’re looking at a bunch of stories, one after another. Imagine him, out on the street with his camera. In one frame, there’s a building, in another, what looks like a street scene with children. Did he take them one after the other? Or did he choose them later? I think about the texture of film, how each image is connected, physically, to the next. The red marks around some of the images remind me of the editing process of a painter. What to keep, what to discard? The marks are bold, like a painter’s gestural brushstroke! The ‘DD’ on one of the frames gives it a feeling of spontaneity. Frank's photos influenced many, and the conversation around street photography is long, full of exchanges and ideas. And here we are today, still looking and wondering.