BOLDLY SIGNED BY ROBERT FRANK, FIRST SCALO EDITION OF THE AMERICANS, 1993, WITH 83 FULL-PAGE PHOTOGRAVURES

FRANK, Robert. The Americans. New York—Zurich—Berlin: Scalo, 1993. Oblong quarto, original black paper boards, original dust jacket.

First Scalo edition of Robert Frank’s masterpiece, first published in France in 1958, signed on the half title by Frank, this handsome edition issued in association with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, which in 1994 honored Frank with “the first National Gallery exhibition devoted to a living photographer” (Looking In), containing Jack Kerouac’s introductory essay on his friend’s work, which first appeared in the 1959 American edition, with 83 full-page photogravures.

Robert Frank “forever changed the course of 20th-century photography (Looking In, xix). His magnum opus, The Americans, first published in France in 1958 and in the United States in 1959, remains “the most renowned photobook of all… None has been more memorable, more influential, nor more fully realized than Frank’s masterpiece” (Parr & Badger I:237). In Jack Kerouac’s memorable preface to his friend’s photobook, he wrote, “Robert Frank… he sucked a sad poem out of America onto film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world.” The Swiss-born photographer traveled across America from 1955 to 1965, 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). “From the more than 20,000 images that resulted, Frank eventually chose 83 of them and arranged them into four chapters… ‘With these photographs,’ he later wrote, ‘I have attempted to show a cross-section of the American population. My effort was to express it simply and without confusion. The view is personal…’ Such a simple intention for a book that would so alter the course of modern photography” (Roth, 150). “First Scalo edition” stated on copyright page. Published in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington, which organized a major retrospective of Frank’s work in 1994, titled Robert Frank, Moving Out. It was “the first National Gallery exhibition devoted to a living photographer” (Looking In, 374). Issued in both cloth and wrappers, no priority established.

A fine signed copy.