London/Wales

by Robert Frank, Philip Brookman (Editor)

Between 1949 and 1953, Robert Frank continually returned to Europe from his new home in New York to take photographs in France, Switzerland, Spain, and Great Britain, photographs that show the development of his uniquely humanist, poetic, and realist eye. In 1951 and early 1952, Frank visited London--"I liked the light, I liked the fog."--and set out to photograph the unique atmosphere of the city. He followed British financiers around the City, capturing them in their traditional top hats and long coats, creating images that depict them in a poetic dance with their fog-shrouded environment. He shot pictures of workers, men delivering coal, children playing on the streets, people waiting or relaxing in the parks, and images of poverty. In these photographs he juxtaposed money and work, wealth and poverty, creating a dynamic photographic project that has never been shown before in its entirety. Then, in March 1953, before the impending nationalization of the country's coal mines, Frank travelled to the town of Careau, in Wales, to photograph the coal miners whose lives revolved around their work. One miner, Ben James, and his family became the subject of a picture essay (originally published in a 1955 issue of U.S. Camera) in which Frank downplayed the classic modernist photographic moment in favor of a more provocative form that offered informal, revealing glances rather than an official document.

Genres: Photography, Nonfiction, Art

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Robert Frank (November 9, 1924 – September 9, 2019) was a Swiss American photographer and documentary filmmaker. His most notable work, the 1958 book titled The Americans, earned Frank comparisons to a modern-day de Tocqueville for his fresh and nuanced outsider's view of American society. Critic Sean O'Hagan, writing in The Guardian in 2014, said The Americans "changed the nature of photography, what it could say and how it could say it. [ ... ] it remains perhaps the most influential photography book of the 20th century." Frank later expanded into film and video and experimented with manipulating photographs and photomontage.

Reviews

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robert Frank's photography books are not simply collections of his photographs. They are his personal reflections of what he is living and seeing at the moment. It is highly intuitive. In London/Wales, the images are juxtaposed with two excerpts from Richard Llewellyn's How Green was my Valley, plus a letter from Frank, Mary and Pablo to his parents. This brings Frank's life at that moment into sharper focus.

[Paul Secor · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great photographer can capture an image and stop time. When I look at some of Robert Frank's images, I have the sense that he's stopped time within time, if that makes any sense.

[Pat Loughery · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding documentary collection of Frank's look at postwar London and Welsh coal miners. This is haunting work by a master artist.

[Nat]

London in 1951 and 1952 looks like Beijing in the wintertime in 2013-2015, but with more bowler hats.

Note that 1952 was the year of London's "Great Smog": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog