<note><![CDATA[© Robert Frank, courtesy of Pace / MacGill Gallery, New York]]></note>
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<title><![CDATA[London]]></title>
<title2><![CDATA[<br>1951-52 (detail)]]></title2>
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<body><![CDATA[Robert Frank’s images of London show an artist discovering himself. With a nod to Bill Brandt’s vision of prewar London and the deeply atmospheric books of Paris by Brassai and André Kertész, Frank developed his own fluidly idiosyncratic approach to photography. In the foggy streets of the post-war City, bankers in bowler hats race against the crowds, detached from the world around them. Looking past the costume and stiff upper lips, Frank’s innovative sensibility comes to the fore. His compositions are lopsided, as if the camera is moving. Like the subject, the photographer is always in transit. He focuses on unknown faces, inviting you to speculate on their life, emotions and how they relate to the dark, exaggerated architecture around them. Swiss-born, Frank travelled between the USA and Europe from 1949 until 1953. During this time, he created what would become the seminal book, Black White and Things (1952). The volume opened with a quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” Frank was using the objective techniques of photojournalism to show that the reality of life lay in the unexpected, while at the same time suggesting everything was actually quite mysterious and far more subjective.]]></body>
