Wales 27 1953

Robert Frank made this photographic contact sheet, Wales 27, using traditional photographic processes. It's full of these little black and white frames, each holding a captured moment, a sliver of reality. You can see he’s marked the sheet with grease pencil, a circle here, some squiggles there. I feel Frank searching, editing, trying to find the right image, the one that speaks. Look at the density of some of those frames – dark figures, maybe huddled together. What was he thinking as he shot these frames? Did he feel like an outsider, looking in? I imagine him in the darkroom, the red light casting shadows as he develops these images. And you can almost feel him thinking about his choices. It reminds you that art-making is a conversation, artists responding to the world, to each other, across time. It’s all about feeling, intention, meaning... but, like, not in a fixed way, more like an open question.