61 79FRANK, Robert. The Americans. Introduction by Jack Kerouac. New York, 1969. Oblong octavo, original black cloth, dust jacket. $12,000 “The Most Renowned Photobook Of All” Second American edition of Robert Frank’s influential masterpiece, a work that “forever changed the course of 20th-century photography,” with 83 full-page photogravures, signed by him. In his preface to his friend Robert Frank’s magnum opus, Jack Kerouac wrote, “Anybody doesn’t like these pitchers dont like potry see? Robert Frank… he sucked a sad poem out of America onto film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world. To Robert Frank I now give this message. You got eyes.” This iconoclastic Swissborn artist—”one of the great photographers of the last 50 years”—traveled across America from 1955 to 1965, using his Leica to reveal “a starkly asymmetrical and lonely America,” and creating images that revolutionized photography with their “irreverence and a dark humor… their grainy, out-of-focus effects, their tilting perspectives and over-the-shoulder half views” (New York Times). The Americans quickly achieved legendary status as “the most renowned photobook of all… It struck a chord with a whole generation of American photographers… Many memorable photobooks have been derived from this mass of material. None has been more memorable, more influential, nor more fully realized than Frank’s masterpiece” (Parr & Badger I:237). “Forever changed the course of 20th-century photography” (Looking In, xix). Preceded by the 1958 French edition and the 1959 first American edition. Open Book, 176. Book aboutfine, dust jacket with minor wear to spine ends, closed tear to rear panel, slightest fading to spine. An excellent copy.
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