Wales 9 1953

Robert Frank created "Wales 9", a gelatin silver print, using a small-format Leica camera. Frank’s methodology was that of a street photographer, capturing a kind of ‘snapshot aesthetic,’ an important shift away from pictorialism towards a more gritty social realism. He printed the roll of film as a single object and marked the best images with red pen, and the image's rough edges and visible sprocket holes serve as reminders of the photographic process. Photographers like Frank saw themselves as social observers, documenting the human condition with their cameras. In "Wales 9," the images capture the daily life of Welsh miners, highlighting the hardships and working-class realities of post-war industrial communities. Frank's work challenged the conventions of fine art photography, breaking away from traditional notions of beauty, to reveal the socio-economic landscape of his time.