<note><![CDATA[© Robert Frank, courtesy of Pace / MacGill Gallery, New York]]></note>
<buttons>
<fullscreen><![CDATA[Full screen]]></fullscreen>
</buttons>
</preview>
<text>
<dimensions width="173" height="385"/>
<title><![CDATA[Wales]]></title>
<title2><![CDATA[<br>1953 (detail)]]></title2>
<title3/>
<byline/>
<body><![CDATA[Although Frank avoided the more obvious<br>photo-story approach, his images of Wales are deeply engrained with a sense of narrative. He photographed the isolated industrial village of Caerau in Glamorgan, south Wales in 1953. Built around a colliery, the place was already in decline and transition. Focusing on the 53-year-old miner Ben James, Frank was given free reign to capture every aspect of his daily life. With more nuance than a documentary, however, Frank sought to detail ΓÇ£the confusing business of leaving values behindΓÇ¥. This personal, intuitive approach is what put him in the vanguard of innovative photographers during the 1950s. James stares out of the series, partly challenging, partly crushed by poverty and the sheer slog of his life. Frank forces us to ask questions about not only the subjectΓÇÖs inner life but also our own. In contrast to the somewhat alien elegance of the London suits, the dignity of the underdog comes through. It is something that hit Frank at a deeper level, connecting to his own experience growing up in a Jewish family in Switzerland during the second world war. ΓÇ£Being Jewish and living with the threat of Hitler,ΓÇ¥ Frank once commented, ΓÇ£must have been a big part of my understanding of people that were put down or held back.ΓÇ¥ ]]></body>
