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Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans, Expanded Edition
Edited and text by Sarah Greenough. Additional text by Anne Tucker, Stuart Alexander, Martin Gasser, Jeff Rosenheim, Michel Frizot, Luc Sante, Philip Brookman.
First published in France in 1958, then in the United States in 1959, Robert Frank’s The Americans changed the course of twentieth-century photography. In 83 photographs, Frank looked beneath the surface of American life to reveal a people plagued by racism, ill-served by their politicians and rendered numb by a rapidly expanding culture of consumption. Yet he also found novel areas of beauty in simple, overlooked corners of American life. And it was not just his subject matter–cars, jukeboxes and even the road itself–that redefined the icons of America; it was also his seemingly intuitive, immediate, off-kilter style, as well as his method of brilliantly linking his photographs together thematically, conceptually, formally and linguistically, that made The Americans so innovative. More of an ode or a poem than a literal document, the book is as powerful and provocative today as it was 50 years ago.
Published to accompany a major exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Looking In: Robert Frank’s “The Americans” celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of this prescient book. Drawing on newly examined archival sources, it provides a fascinating in-depth examination of the making of the photographs and the book’s construction, using vintage contact sheets, work prints and letters that literally chart Frank’s journey around the country on a Guggenheim grant in 1955-1956. Curator and editor Sarah Greenough and her colleagues also explore the roots of The Americans in Frank’s earlier books, which are abundantly illustrated here, and in books by photographers Walker Evans, Bill Brandt and others. The 83 original photographs from The Americans are presented in sequence in as near vintage prints as possible. The catalogue concludes with an examination of Frank’s later reinterpretations and deconstructions of The Americans, bringing full circle the history of this resounding entry in the annals of photography.
This richly illustrated expanded edition of Looking In: Robert Frank’s “The Americans” contains several engaging essays by curator Sarah Greenough that explore the roots of this seminal book, Frank’s travels on a Guggenheim fellowship, the sequencing of The Americans and the book’s impact on his later career. In addition, essays by Anne Wilkes Tucker, Stuart Alexander, Martin Gasser, Jeff L. Rosenheim, Michel Frizot and Luc Sante offer focused analyses of Frank’s relationship with Louis Faurer, Edward Steichen, Gotthard Schuh, Walker Evans, Robert Delpire and Jack Kerouac, while Philip Brookman writes about his work with Frank on several exhibitions in the last 30 years. This edition also reproduces many of Frank’s earlier photographic sequences, as well as all of the photographs in The Americans and selected later works.
In addition, Looking In: Robert Frank’s “The Americans”-Expanded Edition includes a wealth of additional materials, essential information for all interested in twentieth-century photography. It contains all of Frank’s vintage contact sheets related to The Americans, a section that re-creates his preliminary sequence and presents variant croppings of the first and subsequent editions of the book and a map and chronology, along with letters and manuscript materials by Frank, Walker Evans and Jack Kerouac related to Frank’s Guggenheim fellowship, his travels around the United States in 1955-1956, and his construction of the book. This groundbreaking 528-page catalogue is certain to be the definitive source of information on The Americans for years to come.
PUBLISHED BY: National Gallery Of Art, Washington/Steidl
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.25 x 11.5 in. / 528 pgs / 86 color / 280 tritone.
ISBN: 9783865218063 ISBN10: 3865218067
PUBLICATION DATE: 01/01/2009
Bookseller Price Code: TRADE
$75.00
Robert Frank: The Americans
Introduction by Jack Kerouac.
In 1958, the first edition of Robert Frank’s The Americans was published in Paris. Les Américains contained Frank’s 83 photographs in the same sequence as all subsequent editions, with the image on the right hand page, but juxtaposed with historical texts about American society and politics, gathered by Alain Bosquet. The following year, in the first American edition, the French texts were removed and an introduction by Jack Kerouac was added. Over the subsequent 50 years, The Americans has been republished in many editions, in numerous languages, with a variety of cover designs and even in a range of sizes. It is the most famous photography book ever published, and it changed the face of the medium forever.
Robert Frank discussed with his publisher, Gerhard Steidl, the idea of producing a new edition using modern scanning and the finest tritone printing. The starting point was to bring original prints from New York to Göttingen, Germany, where Steidl is based.
In July 2007, Frank visited Göttingen. A new format for the book was worked out and new typography selected. A new cover was designed and Frank chose the book cloth, foil for embossing and the endpaper. Most significantly, as he has done for every edition of The Americans, Frank changed the cropping of many of the photographs, usually including more information. Two images were changed completely from the original 1958 and 1959 editions.
PUBLISHED BY: Steidl/National Gallery of Art, Washington
FORMAT: Hardback, 8.25 x 7.25 in. / 180 pgs / 83 tritone.
ISBN: 9783865215840 ISBN10: 386521584X
PUBLICATION DATE: 05/15/2008
Bookseller Price Code: TRADE
$39.95
Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans
Edited and text by Sarah Greenough. Additional text by Anne Tucker, Stuart Alexander, Martin Gasser, Jeff Rosenheim, Michel Frizot, Luc Sante, Philip Brookman.
First published in France in 1958, then in the United States in 1959, Robert Frank’s The Americans changed the course of twentieth-century photography. In 83 photographs, Frank looked beneath the surface of American life to reveal a people plagued by racism, ill-served by their politicians and rendered numb by a rapidly expanding culture of consumption. Yet he also found novel areas of beauty in simple, overlooked corners of American life. And it was not just his subject matter–cars, jukeboxes and even the road itself–that redefined the icons of America; it was also his seemingly intuitive, immediate, off-kilter style, as well as his method of brilliantly linking his photographs together thematically, conceptually, formally and linguistically, that made The Americans so innovative. More of an ode or a poem than a literal document, the book is as powerful and provocative today as it was 50 years ago.
Published to accompany a major exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Looking In: Robert Frank’s “The Americans” celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of this prescient book. Drawing on newly examined archival sources, it provides a fascinating in-depth examination of the making of the photographs and the book’s construction, using vintage contact sheets, work prints and letters that literally chart Frank’s journey around the country on a Guggenheim grant in 1955-1956. Curator and editor Sarah Greenough and her colleagues also explore the roots of The Americans in Frank’s earlier books, which are abundantly illustrated here, and in books by photographers Walker Evans, Bill Brandt and others. The 83 original photographs from The Americans are presented in sequence in as near vintage prints as possible. The catalogue concludes with an examination of Frank’s later reinterpretations and deconstructions of The Americans, bringing full circle the history of this resounding entry in the annals of photography.
This richly illustrated paperback edition of Looking In: Robert Frank’s “The Americans” contains several engaging essays by curator Sarah Greenough that explore the roots of this seminal book, Frank’s travels on a Guggenheim fellowship, the sequencing of The Americans and the book’s impact on his later career. In addition, essays by Anne Wilkes Tucker, Stuart Alexander, Martin Gasser, Jeff L. Rosenheim, Michel Frizot and Luc Sante offer focused analyses of Frank’s relationship with Louis Faurer, Edward Steichen, Gotthard Schuh, Walker Evans, Robert Delpire and Jack Kerouac, while Philip Brookman writes about his work with Frank on several exhibitions in the last 30 years. This paperback edition also reproduces many of Frank’s earlier photographic sequences, as well as all of the photographs in The Americans and selected later works.
PUBLISHED BY: National Gallery Of Art, Washington/Steidl
FORMAT: Paperback, 9.25 x 11.5 in. / 384 pgs / 86 color / 280 tritone.
ISBN: 9783865217486 ISBN10: 3865217486
PUBLICATION DATE: 01/01/2009
Bookseller Price Code: TRADE
$45.00
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