“AMONG THE TRAGIC POETS OF THE WORLD”: LIMITED FIRST EDITION OF ROBERT FRANK’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN PHOTOS

FRANK, Robert. The Lines of My Hand. (Tokyo: Yugensha, 1972). Folio, original black cloth, original slipcase with mounted cover photograph, original shipping carton. $7500.

Limited first edition of Frank’s memorable autobiography in photographs, preceding the Lustrum publication of the same title, one of 500 copies with the photograph “Platte River, Tennessee” mounted on the slipcase.

Kerouac called his friend Robert Frank an artist who “sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world.” “One of the key figures in postwar American art-the ‘Manet of the new photography,” Frank was once asked to describe his response to The Lines of My Hand, his unorthodox autobiography. “You look at the road you’ve been on,” he said, “and it comes back instantly” (New York Times). This beautifully produced first edition includes a number of images from Frank’s best-known work, Les Americains, a collection of documentary photographs of American life in the 1950s, particularly among the Beats, along with photographs of Frank’s family and images made during his travels in Peru, Spain, England, France. Published in Japan prior to the Lustrum publication of the same title, “Frank’s great confessional both sums up and marks the end not only of a photographic era, but a final coming to terms with the effects of WWII and the Bomb” (Parr & Badger I:238). With 30-page caption booklet in Japanese, often missing, laid in. From a limited edition of 1000 unnumbered copies, this is one of 500 copies with the slipcase photograph of “Platte River, Tennessee” (remaining copies with slipcase photograph “New York City, 1948”). Open Book, 286-87.

A fine copy in original publisher’s wrapping and shipping box.