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The Americans
from: Steidl/National Gallery of Art, Washington
List Price: $39.95Your Price: $26.37 You Save: $13.58 (34%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.9
EAN: 9783865215840
ISBN: 386521584X
Label: Steidl/National Gallery of Art, Washington
Manufacturer: Steidl/National Gallery of Art, Washington
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 180
Publication Date: June 01, 2008
Publisher: Steidl/National Gallery of Art, Washington
Release Date: May 30, 2008
Studio: Steidl/National Gallery of Art, Washington
Editorial Review:
Product Description:
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.
Amazon.com Review:
Armed with a camera and a fresh cache of film and bankrolled by a Guggenheim Foundation grant, Robert Frank crisscrossed the United States during 1955 and 1956. The photographs he brought back form a portrait of the country at the time and hint at its future. He saw the hope of the future in the faces of a couple at city hall in Reno, Nevada, and the despair of the present in a grimy roofscape. He saw the roiling racial tension, glamour, and beauty, and, perhaps because Frank himself was on the road, he was particularly attuned to Americans' love for cars. Funeral-goers lean against a shiny sedan, lovers kiss on a beach blanket in front of their parked car, young boys perch in the back seat at a drive-in movie. A sports car under a drop cloth is framed by two California palm trees; on the next page, a blanket is draped over a car accident victim's body in Arizona.
Robert Frank's Americans reappear 40 years after they were initially published in this exquisite volume by Scalo. Each photograph (there are more than 80 of them) stands alone on a page, while the caption information is included at the back of the book, allowing viewers an unfettered look at the images. Jack Kerouac's original introduction, commissioned when the photographer showed the writer his work while sitting on a sidewalk one night outside of a party, provides the only accompanying text. Kerouac's words add narrative dimension to Frank's imagery while in turn the photographs themselves perfectly illustrate the writer's own work.
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Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - Robert Frank, not Jack Kerouac
contrary to what is listed, The Americans is by Robert Frank, the photographer. the photos are timeless and i still use them to teach photography to college students
jack kerouac only wrote the forward.
set the record straight for non-photographers.
thank you.
Rating:  - iNTERESTING
Excellent print quality.. A glance at common people in random daily-life shots. It's a book worth a place in your hands
Rating: - It's not by Jack K.
This book was not by Jack Kerouac. It's by Robert Frank. It's one of the seminal books in the history of photography. Many see it as a hate letter to America, but that's a shallow reading of the book. It's some of the best documentary done by a non-documentarian of the American culture of the period. If you really want to see great photography with a point of view, this is a good start.
I find lots of listings get authorship wrong when the book is about a photographer's work. Amazon needs to fix this basic flaw in their system.
Rating: - The definitive "The Americans"
We're lucky to have this edition. Robert Frank is an old man with health issues now. That he is healthy enough to oversee this work is wonderful. Everything about this edition - especially in comparison to the 2007 Delpine edition I purchased earlier this year - is first-rate. I wish I had known this was coming out!
The book is a little smaller than the Delpine, but that's the only real negative (if it is one) I can think of. The main thing to me is that the photos themselves are how Frank intended them to look. Gone are the overly-lightened faces that plague the Delpine book. This is a pet peeve of mine that kills many photos in this Photoshop age. This is very obvious in the New Orleans trolley photo. In the Delpine work, the faces of the white passengers are totally washed out, and the black faces are awkwardly lightened (someone apparently thought they were helping Frank's work). That's all corrected here. In this Steidl edition things are shown as they were intended. One can even see details in the face of the man at far left, even though it is partially obscured by a window reflection.
Also, on several photos more of the frame is visible. This was most noticeable to me in the Butte, Montana photo of the woman looking out the car window, with several children in the back seat. A good portion of the left side of the photo is now visible, along with more shown on the top and bottom. The new crop just seems more "right." Not too mention that the face of the child in the middle of the photo is too light in the older edition.
Simply put, comparing the two editions is an eye opener. I first saw these photos years ago in a much earlier edition (I believe it was the 1969 Aperture work) and I still marvel at the depth of the images in that printing. I don't have that edition in hand, so I can't do a direct comparison, but I believe the Steidl images are much closer to that ideal. Franks prefers his images a little on the flat, low-key side. Another difference is that the photos are now printed on a non-glossy paper. I was surprised at this at first, but now I believe it works much better for this book.
In short, if you want an accurate, lovingly-printed edition of The Americans at a reasonable price, this is the one. Highly recommended.
Rating: - Black and White and Grey
Looking at this again after many years ( I first came across it about 25 years ago) the images are as poignant as ever. This is truly a great book of photographs and is perhaps the best photojournalist's collection ever published. The new edition has all the gravity and attention to detail that the work deserves.
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