The Americans. Robert Frank. Introduction by Jack Kerouac. Grove Press, New York, 1959. 180 pp. Unpaginated. Oblong quarto. First edition. Clothbound in photo-illustrated dustjacket. 83 Black-and-white reproductions.
Additional scans of book and dust jacket below.
See images from the Metropolitan Museum's landmark exhibition
Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans
"...paved the way for three decades of photographs exploring the personal poetics of lived experience. Many memorable photobooks have been derived from this mass of material. None has been more memorable, more influential, nor more fully realized than Franks's masterpiece."--Parr and Badger, The Photobook: A History, Vol. I
"It was Frank's The Americans that made the photographic book into an artform in its own right. Frank was following a lead set by Morris' book [The Inhabitants] and, especially, by Evans' American Photographs, both of which are designed to let pictures play off each other in a way that controls and reinforces their effect on the viewer. Even Klein's New York book displays this tendency. But Frank's goes much further, creating a denser, richer, deeper structure of images than any book before it."--Colin Westerbeck in Michel Frizot, et. al., The New History of Photography
See images from the Metropolitan Museum's landmark exhibition
Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans
Fine-; light foxing to upper page edges; touch of fading to upper board edges and tips; previous owner's name in small hand on front free-endpaper; Very Good dust jacket; clean 2" slit to front panel of dj (with faint trace on cloth beneath); tiny chip (less than 1/2") upper edge of rear panel; a few tiny edge tears (less than 1/8"); extremities typically tanned; light foxing to verso. |
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