Robert Frank: The Americans (Trade Edition)

One of the most important photobooks ever made.

First published in France in 1958, then in the United States in 1959 with an introduction by Jack Kerouac, The Americans changed the shape of photography. Robert Frank’s road-worn view of postwar America was raw, uneasy, poetic and unsentimental — a portrait of jukeboxes, flags, highways, diners, parades, faces, grief, glamour and loneliness.

Shot across the United States in the mid-1950s, the book rejected polish in favour of atmosphere. Frank’s images feel immediate and restless, closer to a visual notebook than a traditional documentary project. It is a book about America, but also about looking: what gets missed, what sits at the edge of the frame, what a country reveals when nobody is performing for the camera.

This Trade Edition brings Frank’s landmark sequence back into circulation in an accessible format, preserving the force of a book that helped define the modern photobook and influenced generations of photographers, artists, filmmakers and zine makers.

Essential shelf material for anyone interested in photography, documentary image-making, American culture or the photobook as an art form.

Details
Publisher: Aperture
Photographer: Robert Frank
Introduction: Jack Kerouac
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 180
Dimensions: 21.6 x 19 x 9.1 cm
Weight: 758 g
Language: English
Publication year: 2024
ISBN: 978-1-59711-571-1