Lot 98
Robert Frank(1924-2019)Wales (Ben James, Miner)
28 April – 12 May 2020, 14:00 EDT
Online, New YorkUS$15,000 - US$25,000
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Robert Frank (1924-2019)
Wales (Ben James, Miner), 1953
Gelatin silver print, signed by the artist, credit, title, date, notation '2535' in an unknown hand in pencil/ ink and Lunn Archive copyright credit reproduction limitation stamps on the verso.
13 5/8 x 9 1/4in (34.5 x 23.5cm)
sheet 14 x 11in (35.5 x 27.9cm)
Gelatin silver print, signed by the artist, credit, title, date, notation '2535' in an unknown hand in pencil/ ink and Lunn Archive copyright credit reproduction limitation stamps on the verso.
13 5/8 x 9 1/4in (34.5 x 23.5cm)
sheet 14 x 11in (35.5 x 27.9cm)
Footnotes
Provenance
With Rick Wester Photographs, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York
Literature
Frank and Maloney ed., "Ben James: Story of a Welsh Miner," U.S. Camera Annual, New York: U.S. Camera Publishing Corp., 1954, 82–93, variant illustrated
In 1953, Robert Frank photographed two South Wales mining communities, Caerau and Maesteg. The National Coal Board permitted Frank to shadow miners as they went about their daily activities and he chose Ben James as the main protagonist for his photo essay. The series was first published in the 1955 issue of U.S. Camera Annual.
In creating these photographs, Frank began to flout "straight" photojournalism in favor of something more intangible, less formally structured. His sitters tell of the hardship and monotony of working class life in postwar industrial Britain, endured in surroundings steeped in coal dust and rain. Frank's brilliant and intuitive sequencing of his stark Welsh documentary makes it the direct precursor to The Americans.
Bruce Davidson returned to the area just over a decade later and his photographs provide an interesting counterpoint to Frank's. A beneficiary of the older photographer's innovative treatment of subject matter to tell a story and evoke a mood, Davidson's show how far these mining communities have progressed. His subjects seem less ghostly and Dickensian and are pictures of a less sooty and claustrophobic landscape than Frank's, which may occasionally even see the sun.
