Robert Frank | The Americans

Robert Frank

The Americans

New York City, USA: Grove Press, 1959

180 pp., 7.4 x 8.5", hardcover

Edition size unknown

A provenance copy of the American edition of Robert Frank’s best known book, now sixty-five years old. The title is signed and inscribed by Frank: "Barney Rosset / is a good long lasting memory / Thanks.”

Rosset was Frank’s publisher, the founder of Grove Press in 1951 and Evergreen Review in 1957. He has published works by Samuel Beckett,  Jean Genet, Alex Haley, Henry Miller, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, Tom Stoppard and Harold Pinter. 

He was one of the first to publish beat poets Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, the latter contributing the forward to this books. The legend has Frank meeting Kerouac shortly after returning to New York in 1947, on the sidewalk outside a party. Frank reportedly showed him the photographs from his travels and Kerouac immediately replied "Sure I can write something about these pictures." 

"Robert Frank he sucked a sad poem out of America onto film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world. To Robert Frank I now give this message. You got eyes." 

- Jack Kerouac, preface

Robert Frank – Books and Film 1947-2014

[Robert Frank]
Robert Frank – Books and Film 1947-2014
Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2016
64 pp., 40 x 57 cm., newspaper
Edition size unknown

Edited by Axel Rühle, this exhibition catalogue takes the form of a special edition of the German newspaper the Süddeutsche Zeitung. It is printed on newsprint and follows the format and design of the daily paper, one of the largest in Germany.

Conceived by Robert Frank and Gerhard Steidl, the exhibition focuses on Frank's influential bookworks and film projects. These are presented in the context of his life, creative processes, and wider cultural history. The images in the show are also printed on newsprint  -three metres long and installed directly onto the walls. Gallery staff destroyed them following the run of the exhibition.

The newspaper catalogue features interviews, essays, letters and opinion pieces alongside photo sequences. The unpretentious format appealed to Frank's sensibilities. “Cheap, quick and dirty, that’s how I like it!” he is reported to have said about newspaper.

The final two images above are from an exhibition of the same name, held at the Anna Leonowens Gallery in Halifax in 2014. Frank died in September of this year, in Inverness, Nova Scotia.

Robert Frank | The Americans

Robert Frank
The Americans
New York City, USA: Grove Press, 1959
[170] pp., 18.3 × 20.7 cm., hardcover
First Edition

"What a poem this is," Jack Kerouac writes in his introduction, "what poems can be written about this book of pictures some day by young new writers." He goes on to call the book "Better than a show", indicating an astute understanding of artists' books before the genre was even named.

Robert Frank received a Guggenheim grant to produce the work, travelling ten thousand miles across America between April 1955 and June 1956, with the aim of completing a body of work that would be a broad record of Americana, past and present.

Several of the individual images have become iconic, but the book is renowned for its complex sequencing. After shooting over seven-hundred rolls of film, Frank selected 83 images for the book, divided into four chapters, each beginning with an American flag. The American edition differs from the French version published a year prior. Frank discards the original accompanying texts and adds Kerouac's introduction for what became the definitive version of the book.

Photographer Martin Parr amassed a collection of 12,000 photo books, now in the collection of the Tate Modern. He remembers The Americans as being the first book of photography that he owned, purchased in the 70's when he was in college. He considers the title a "masterpiece" and "the most renowned photo book of all."


"[The Americans] changed the nature of photography, what it could say and how it could say it. It remains perhaps the most influential photography book of the 20th century."

- Sean O'Hagan, The Guardian

Frank died yesterday at the age of 94, at his home in Nova Scotia.

Robert Frank | Zero Mostel Reads a Book

Robert Frank
Zero Mostel Reads a Book 
New York City, USA: New York Times, 1963
[unpaginated], 15 x 22 cm, hardcover
Edition size unknown

This book - commissioned by the New York times as a gift to subscribers, but apparently never distributed that way - features images of the comedian Zero Mostel reading, photographed by his friend Robert Frank.

Robert Frank | The Americans

Robert Frank

The Americans

New York City, USA: Grove Press, 1959

180 pp., 7.4 x 8.5", hardcover

Edition size unknown

"Robert Frank he sucked a sad poem out of America onto film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world. To Robert Frank I now give this message. You got eyes." 

                                                                                   - Jack Kerouac, preface

Frank turns 92 today.