Buckingham Palace--London 24 1952 - 1953

Editor: This is Robert Frank's "Buckingham Palace--London 24," created between 1952 and 1953. It's a gelatin silver print, presented as a contact sheet. Seeing all these frames together like this feels very raw and immediate. What draws your eye when you look at it? Curator: I'm struck by how the material presentation itself becomes part of the artwork. This isn't a polished, idealized image; it's a working document. Frank leaves in the traces of the photographic process itself – the sprocket holes, the frame numbers, even what seems to be handwritten markings. It's about demystifying the artistic process. Editor: So, instead of just a finished product, we see the artist's… labor? Curator: Precisely! It's about the act of making. We see the contingency of the street photographer, capturing moments from a specific social stratum during a period of postwar rebuilding, where British identity was intensely debated. Notice how the rigid formality of Buckingham Palace contrasts sharply with the unposed citizens gathered nearby. Editor: The juxtaposition between the palace and the crowds. Curator: Exactly, Frank isn't just capturing images; he's recording the materials and the mechanisms of cultural representation, its rituals and labor. Do you see this as a deliberate decision from the artist to present it as such? Editor: That makes me think about how easy it is today to forget how photographs were made. Seeing this reminds me it was a physical, material process, involving labor and choices about selection. It certainly changes my perspective. Curator: Right? This is what art can be—not just what we see in the final image, but the process and materials that create meaning too.