Charleston County Public Library

The Americans, photographs by Robert Frank ; introduction by Jack Kerouac

eng

illustrations

no index present

non fiction

The Americans

183263590

photographs by Robert Frank ; introduction by Jack Kerouac

From the Publisher: In 1958, the first edition of Robert Frank's The Americans was published in Paris. Les Americains contained 83 photographs in the same sequence as subsequent editions, with the image on the right, 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 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 Gottingen, Germany, where Steidl is based. In July 2007, Frank visited Gottingen. 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, 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