Wales 30 1953

Robert Frank made this photo contact sheet, sometime in his career, using photography and marker. It's a collection of moments, a way of seeing all the takes at once, kind of like how a painter might lay out sketches. I'm drawn to the raw, almost brutal honesty of it. The red and yellow marker slashes and circles aren't about prettiness; they're about decision-making, editing. They carve through the images, highlighting, discarding. Look at the sequence of frames, the subtle shifts in light and shadow. You can almost feel Frank moving, adjusting, searching for the right shot. The texture is all there: the grain of the film, the smudges, the imperfections. It reminds me that art isn't about perfection; it's about process, about the messy, human act of trying to capture something real. I think of other artists who embraced the snapshot aesthetic, like Nan Goldin, but Frank’s marks are a more direct intervention. It’s like he’s saying, “This is how I see, this is what I choose.”