Robert Frank: In America

I am glad I have added this to my library. But the photos with impact are the ones already contained in The Americans. Frank took thousands of photos, produced one stunning, powerful and personal book. And then left photography more or less alone. This book does sort of explain why. There are many images here which are ordinary, very ordinary. A handsome production. An important slice of history.

Looking through the 131 fascinating photos in the book is like coming across The Americans volume two, though this is not strictly accurate because there are twenty-two from the original title included here. Peter Galassi's front of book illustrated essay provides some thoughtful background detail about Frank's photo style in the context of mid-fifties America. On page thirty-three he says The Americans is not an album of Frank's best work, though it does have some of his great photos but the book, with its one photo per spread sequencing, allows the images of everyday America to create an emotional punch when viewed as a whole.No other photo book of the period could claim that, Klein's classic New York title and work from the New York School photographers produced powerful images but only from a regional perspective. Frank's book is successful I think because it covered a huge area of post-war America, a time of plenty for many millions and why the critics of the day didn't like the coverage because it didn't reflect that feel-good factor. Included in Galassi's essay is a detailed map (over a spread) with the places Frank visited between 1949 to 1961 with page numbers for the photos in the book. New York, Los Angeles and Detroit provide the most. The photos follow no particular geographic or date sequence: New York 1951 on one page is facing Hollywood 1958. Galassi says the trips created 767 rolls of film or 27,000 frames. The Steidl book  Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans  expanded edition, reproduces over two thousand of these frames in contact sheet form.A thing I noticed about many of the photos is that people are looking elsewhere, not at Frank taking their photos but out of the frame to the left or right or at something in the frame, a shop window for instance. Many photos have no people in them at all but showing almost still-life detail: a rack of postcards at Hoover Dam; a New York photographer's window full of baby snaps; the letter H of the Hollywood sign; a shirt on a hanger in a Detroit factory. Nearly all the eighty-three in the original book feature people.A point worth noting from Galassi's essay is that he suggests having a copy of The Americans at hand because he refers to so many photos in it and this book and usefully he provides a page number guide to the original title that just had captions for the photos. This Steidl edition is beautifully produced with 175 screen tritones on a slightly off-white matt paper.Robert Frank in America with its excellent essay and photos is the perfect comlement to the original classic photo book.

Classic images, wonderful book!

If you love "The Americans", this book is a great complement. Some photos of "The Americans" are published also here, in a larger format (great to study details), and with a different greyscale.

Un valido complemento a "The Americans", con molte foto ripubblicate anche qui in formato maggiore (permettendo un miglior studio dei dettagli) e con una diversa scala di grigi.Peccato che mancano molte foto famose di Frank scattate negli USA, come quella scattata sulla spiaggia nel 1962 ed intitolata "Marilyn is dead" (una ragazza in spiaggia che legge la notizia della morte di Marilyn Monroe sul giornale mentre una bambina sullo sfondo corre sventolando la bandiera americana), nonchè la serie From the Bus, altrettanto interessante ed altrettanto ignorata.

Très beau livre avec bonnes photos de Frank.

Really disappointed with the substandard print quality of this book.

An outstanding introduction by Peter Galassi, and a selection that adds a great deal to our appreciation of the matrix from which The Americans came. Good reproductions of many unfamiliar Frank photos. Every one is of immense value. Good formatting--no guttered photos, square format fair to both vertical and horizontal frames--essential for Frank's work. Some of the best quality reproductions of the photos of this period of Frank's work.

The perfect companion book to "Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans, An Expanded View". In this book, Peter Galassi covers the period preceding the initial publication of the seminal "The Americans" in1959 and the background of what was going on in the world of photography and the difficulties encountered by early photographers of Frank's ilk in terms of publication politics, resistance to the new, smaller 35mm camera format and what was and what was not considered "fine art" (photography was not) at the time. Highly instructive and informative for anyone with a serious interest in photographic history and the role pioneers like Robert Frank, Walker Evans and a few others had shaping the world of photography as an art form and as we know it today.

Illiterate (i.e. e.g.)

I like this wonderful book.

Deeper dive into Frank's work on The Americans. Nice to see additional photographs that weren't included in the final book.

This is a fantastic look at Frank's work.

Amazing book! Nice edition and a lot of pictures that are not in The Americans.