Robert Frank: London/Wales

The precursor to The Americans contrasts economic strata on the other side of the Atlantic

This is a new edition of London/Wales, which brings together two distinct bodies of work to reveal a different understanding of Robert Frank's (1924-2019) contribution to the history of photography. Juxtaposing the world of money and the world of work in postwar England, Frank photographed London bankers and workers as well as Welsh coal miners and their families. These images poetically evoke relationships between the classes during a time of change in Britain. Frank was particularly inspired by Richard Llewellyn's novel How Green Was My Valley (1939) and the Academy Award-winning film of the same name, which focused on one family in a Welsh mining town. "Then I met a man from Wales talking about the miners," Frank recalls. "This became my only try to make a 'story.'" The resulting black-and-white photographs contrast the elegant yet foggy London streets with the coal-blackened faces of miners eating and drinking after their daylong shifts.
Setting a significant documentary precedent for Frank's best-known work, The Americans, London/Wales demonstrates the artist's early interest in social commentary, the narrative potential of photographic sequencing and his innovative use of the expressionistic qualities of the medium. Originally published in 2003 by Scalo and then in an expanded 2007 Steidl edition that was last reprinted in 2019, London/Wales tells a timeless story of cities, people and institutions in transition through emotional, evocative images while revealing Frank's struggle to forge a new form of poetic narrative photography.