Wales 19 1953

This is Robert Frank's 'Wales 19', a small, black and white photograph featuring frames of film strip with red markings on it. I imagine Frank in the darkroom, light spilling across these strips of images. I can almost feel him peering intently, making tiny decisions about each frame. He's isolating certain moments and creating a new kind of narrative – one that embraces fragments and chance encounters. The red marks feel so deliberate and intuitive, adding another layer of editing to the image. They highlight the inherent subjectivity of the medium and the idea of selection: which image gets chosen and why? Like the Abstract Expressionists, he understood the importance of the gesture. Frank's photographs echo the work of artists like Henri Cartier-Bresson, both searching for the 'decisive moment,' while his sequencing mirrors the work of filmmakers experimenting with narrative structure. This piece is a reminder that artists are always in conversation, building upon each other's ideas. The image embraces the messy, the accidental, and the open-ended nature of life itself.