Valencia, Spain 37/Lines of My Hand 30/Black White and Things 1 1952

Editor: This is "Valencia, Spain 37/Lines of My Hand 30/Black White and Things 1," a gelatin silver print by Robert Frank, created in 1952. It’s a contact sheet with a series of street photography frames. What strikes me are the red markings, seemingly annotations. What story do they tell about the photographic process? Curator: What you're pointing out, the red markings, is crucial. It foregrounds the *making* of the final photograph. We see Frank's labor, his editorial decisions physically marked onto the film. The gelatin silver print itself, as a reproducible medium, allows for dissemination of these decisions, blurring the lines between the original artistic gesture and its reproductions and mass availability. Editor: So it's not just the photographs themselves, but the record of the selection process that becomes part of the art? How would that be different if we just looked at a single photograph from the contact sheet? Curator: Precisely. Consider the material constraints – the limited number of frames on a roll of film. Frank's annotations highlight the limitations and choices inherent to the medium itself. How does that impact the street scenes he has selected? Does it tell us something more broadly of social attitudes towards photography and labour in art? Editor: That’s fascinating. It makes me think about the labor that goes into even what seems like a spontaneous photograph, and how those choices influence how we perceive the scene itself. I never considered all the steps taken behind the scenes! Curator: Right, understanding these steps really lets you appreciate the deliberate nature behind Frank's "snapshot aesthetic". We need to examine and bring visibility to artistic labour. Editor: This perspective really changes how I'll look at photographs from now on. Thank you!