Above Jean Shrimpton, 1965 from 'Then' by David Bailey. (©David Bailey/Courtesy of Hamiltons Gallery).

Less than a decade ago, I spent a great deal of my working life as an art director, looking at and editing contact sheets; the result of photographic commissions that ranged from portrait sessions to interiors shoots, and from documentary to fashion stories; and every genre in between. Sometimes these contact sheets, numbered a mere handful — the result of an all too brief celebrity portrait session — at other times they would reach many tens, requiring days of careful and patient editing; loupe in one hand, and china-graph pencil in the other.

But with the advent of digital imaging, the number of contact sheets that came over my desk began to rapidly decline, in some instances almost overnight — digital contact sheets aside. That’s not to say I still don’t look at contact sheets, over the last few months I’ve been working on a number of projects with photographers that I have commissioned, where we have worked with film, and thus resulted in the photographer producing contact sheets. I’ve really enjoy the opportunity to move away from my computer, and spend sometime looking at images through my faithful Schneider loupe, a process that feels so much more intimate, than that of editing on screen; although if I am totally honest I rarely edit images on screen preferring to print them out; arranging and re-arranging them on the floor — where I am frequently to be found surrounded by prints — or positioning and repositioning them on the magnetic wall in my studio.

Earlier this year, I wrote about London’s Magnum Print Room which held an exhibition of prints, titled The Magnum Mark; that included the verso of some iconic images each revealing the stamps and physical marks that had accumulated over the decades, and held within them visual clues to the prints life. As I wrote at the time, such prints have always intrigued me and continue to fascinated me, and contact sheets hold a similar fascination. But whilst these these archive or library prints are public spaces, where each generation leaves their own physical traces; the contact print forms a far more private space, rarely seen by anyone beyond the photographers inner circle.

However, unlike the archive prints which hold clues and answers to its own physical journey — from archive to client, and back — and its usage; contact prints generally offer an insight into the photographers creative process, frequently raising more questions than they answer. Why was that one frame chosen over another almost identical image? Why was that image cropped in such away? But they also, and possibly most importantly offer a view into the mind of the photographer, where we may learn so much from what is left out of the final edit, or how the photographer has explored their chosen subject.

Above Contact print #386, 2004 by Richard Baker. (©Richard Baker/Courtesy of the photographer).

Celebrated British photographer Richard Baker, who is known for his in-depth document of the Royal Air Force’s acrobatic team the Red Arrows, has recently included three sheets of contact prints on his blog, in what he says may become a regular series from his archive. ‘Within a very short period, the role, personality and purpose of the contact sheet is for many, quite unknown,’ he writes. Working within the tight confines of the aircraft cockpit, and the restrictive flight suit and helmet, Baker was limited to just twenty frames of film for each 30 minute trip he made with the team, one of which he made on 7 September 2004, and resulted in contact sheet numbers 385 and 386, each consisting of ten frames. Through the canopy of the chase aircraft that Baker worked from, we see the distinctive diamond-formation of the display team, high above the sun dappled pastures of England. 

As we look at these contact prints, we see Baker mark his preferred frames — his selection — with white china-graph pencil, that in its texture almost mirrors the white plumes of smoke that we see trailing from the nine Hawk jets. Further marks — sometimes crosshatched — define areas to be cropped from the frame, whilst the annotation ‘CROP SQ’ signals a change of format from the original rectangular medium-format negative.

Above Contact print, Jonathan Franzen by Julian Anderson. (©Julian Anderson/Courtesy of the photographer).

Famously known for analysing other photographers’ contact sheets as a means to judging their work, the Magnum photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) was a strong advocate of the ‘un-cropped’ image. Yet the contact sheet of a man jumping over a puddle on the Place de l'Europe, Gare Saint Lazare, in Paris during 1932, reveal to the viewer that at least once, and maybe only once; that the strength of the final image dictated that the railings through which he shot — and which infringed into his photographic frame — demanded that on this occasion the negative should be cropped during printing, resulting in one of the photographers most famous images.

Photographer Julian Anderson says, ‘contacts show exactly how the photographers mind was working,’ and for that very reason, the contact print becomes ‘very difficult to share,’ as it forms what is only a stepping stone between the negative, and the final work, the photographic print. So it is that the contact print, becomes like the artists sketchbook, a series of notes and decisions that will define the final and all important work, that unlike the contact sheet, is to be shared and viewed by a wider public.

Above Club Allegro Fortissimo, Paris, 1990. Painted contact print by William Klein. (©William Klein).

One of the contact sheets that Anderson is happy to share — and which he has recently written about on his own blog — is from a portrait commission for New Statesman magazine in 2006, and a typical example of the type of commissions that he undertakes. 'I was asked to photograph the American novelist Jonathan Franzen, on a dark winters morning in a typically pokey London hotel lounge, on arrival he seemed very reluctant and reticent to be there at all,' says Anderson, 'A potentially difficult subject and scenario.' Looking at this contact sheet we see how Anderson begins the session by shooting from the side to minimize any unease the subject has and to get him used to the process, before progressing to a more engaging and intimate view into the lens and ultimately the viewer. 'This I only managed to shoot two frames of before I knew what would be a short ten minute session, came to a close. In looking again at this work after a few years there are several options on the final image with my favourite being frame number 13.'

Occasionally the contact print itself becomes the final work, as we see in American photographer William Klein’s work Contacts (Contrasto, 2008). Here the photographer, takes as his reference the china-graph marks that we frequently encounter on contact sheets — like those on Baker’s photographs of the Red Arrows — representing them in bold and dramatic swathes of primary coloured paint. Whilst on a simpler level, David Bailey exhibited a series of large-scale contact prints titled, Then, at London’s Hamiltons gallery in 2009, that included his portrait of the sixties model Jean Shrimpton, where three frames are marked with yellow and red china-graph, two bearing the annotation ‘RITZ’ in red pencil; the same red pencil, that highlights a single frame on a contact print of portraits made of the singer Mick Jagger. Whilst Scottish photographer Albert Watson, has also produced an entire series of works that take as their basis the contact sheet format, and include his iconic images of Kate Moss, Alfred Hitchcock, Monkey with Masks, and Lynn Birdcage. 

Above Contact print, Meryl Streep by Brigitte Lacombe. (©Brigitte Lacombe/Courtesy of Steidl).

Whilst the contacts of Klein, Bailey and Watson, are specifically made to be exhibited, very occasionally a contact print is just that — a stage in the making of a final print or larger story — but it transcends the space between process and gallery or collection. One example of this, is the work of legendary Swiss photographer Robert Frank, who’s entire contact sheets from his seminal work,The Americans, are reproduced in there entirety in, Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans(Steidl, 2009), one of which was sold at auction by Christie’s in 2009 for $40,000.

In Anima/Persona (Steidl, 2009), French photographer Brigitte Lacombe displays a double contact sheet of a portrait session with the actress Meryl Streep. Here we see six frames marked with the now ubiquitous china-graph and the remains of Magic Tape revealing that these photographic prints are possibly secured to an archival board. But we also notice two images in the bottom right corner, around which white tape has carefully been placed, forming a visual picture frame that lifts these two sensitive portraits from the black ground of the photographic paper. Here we see an initial edit — defined by simple red marks — that the photographer then refines, finally choosing two frames, from which 8x10 work prints maybe made, before she decides on the final image selection.

Above Contact print, Silesia, Poland, 1993. (©Justin Leighton/Courtesy of the photographer).

Unlike the portrait photographer; the contact sheets of the documentary photographer or photojournalist, generally show greater variation in their content, and as such, they appear as what photographic printer and admirer of the contact print, Jack Lowe has described as a ‘one page graphic novel.’ Whilst the Britisher photographer Justin Leighton — who has posted contacts from his extensive archive on his own blog — describes contacts as frequently ‘noisy unformed arguments... that produce one or two conversations.’ An analogy that becomes very clear when looking at the work of documentary photographers or photojournalists, whose work is defined by its narrative quality. Here the image selection is informed by a desire to tell a story, however, over time and with changing social and political stances that story may change, altering the sense or direction of the ‘conversation.’ Something that may only emerge with time, and in the shadow of history.

An example of one of these ‘unformed arguments’ is a story Leighton produced in Silesia in southern Poland in 1993. A region that the photographer had worked in regularly during the 1980s whilst it was still under Communist control. The photographs where made during the feast day of St. Barbara, the patron Saint of Miners and those who work underground. ‘When shooting a documentary style story there are so many variables constant coming at you from every side. Will the people I'm with get bored of me and forget I'm there, or bored of me and kick me out,’ says Leighton, who continues, ‘It's always a juggling act with every frame you take.’ And when you return from the assignment, and gaze at the contact prints before you, the argument continues. ‘It's a wild torrent of images that you have to control through the editing process. You also have to control your own emotions in what will make the statement that will tell the story to the viewer.’

Above Contact print, Mayday 2001 by Brian David Stevens. (©Brian David Stevens/Courtesy of the photographer).

On the 1 May 2001, central London was gripped by a host of Mayday protests, which photographer Brian David Stevens — who has recently posted a set of contact sheets from the days events on his own blog — was documenting. ‘I was kettled in the centre of Oxford Circus with the majority of the protestors in the pouring rain,’ writes Stevens, who says the the first decent frame he made was from a roll of film marked as ‘BW42666’ on the proof. Selecting frame three, Stevens image depicts a row of Metropolitan police offers dressed in protective riot gear; the rain splattered visors of their helmets down, two female officers appear sandwiched between their male colleagues who dominate the foreground of the image. One of the female officers has her eyes close, as if lost in thought and isolated from the dramatic scenes that are unwinding around her, whilst the second female office appears almost bemused, questioning why she is actually here.

Looking at Stevens contact sheets, like those of other photographers, we are offered an insight into what else was going on around the selected frame at the time of its exposure, and in doing so, a little of what may be considered the mythology of the final image is removed. But in an historical context, this ability to look back at contact prints, to see a fuller context in which the images where made, and how the photographer approached his or her subject becomes an important privilege.

Above Marilyn Monroe, 1962 by Bert Stern. (©Bert Stern/Courtesy of Taschen).

Looking through a copy of the recently released Norman Mailer, Bert Stern: Marilyn Monroe (Taschen, 2011), which includes many of Stern’s iconic images of the actress, we see that it is not always the photographer or picture editor whose marks are to be found on contact sheets. Here it is Monroe who interacts the proofs, famously crossing through with an orange Magic Marker all of the images that she did not approve of; including defacing a host of transparencies by physically marking the films surface. Looking at one single sheet of thirty-six black and white exposures made during a 1962 session, we see that of these three dozen frames, Monroe only found four acceptable.

The contact print forms a significant part of the photographers analogue process; but ultimately once it has served its purpose, and the individual images have been chosen and printed, it is filed, rarely to to see the light of day again. Yet in returning to these contact prints, there is much to be learned of the photographers process and methodology, and with it the very history of photography itself.