London 46 1952 - 1953

Robert Frank's 'London 46', is a photographic contact sheet, capturing a series of moments in grayscale. It's like a storyboard, each frame a piece of a larger, unspoken narrative. The texture here is all about the film grain, that gritty realness of street photography. The contrast between light and shadow gives depth, almost like chiaroscuro in painting. Note the red pencil markings and scrawled ‘46’ – a human touch, a visible record of the artist’s selection process. That large blank square is intriguing: a moment intentionally left unexposed or redacted? It reminds me of the power of absence in art. The surrounding frames, glimpses of London life, feel more potent because of it. Like Cy Twombly's mark making, the process becomes the point, with erasures and revisions taking center stage. Frank isn't just showing us a picture; he's revealing his way of seeing.