Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans, Expanded Edition

EAN:9783865218063 Label:National Gallery Of Art, Washington/SteidlArray Binding:Hardcover

Can't add much to what the other fine reviewers said except that the quality of the photographs are keenly reproduced and only add to the heightened anticipation of turning to the next page Great book!. 2009-03-04 Rating 5. This extremely thick and encyclopedia-like book thoroughly examines Robert Frank's life and photographic oeuvre Essential. It presents itself as an essential book for anyone with an interest in The Americans, a hallmark of 20th century photography2009-03-01 Rating 5. Essays dealing with different stages of the photographer's life are well-written and insightful. The contact sheets and work prints from The Americans are an added bonus and give us an insightful view of just how gifted and ahead of his time Frank was in the 1950s. Although compendiums have been written about Robert Frank (see Moving Out), this is the definitive written and visual record of his life and work. Also to be noted - if you were thinking of purchasing The Americans you might as well spend a little more money and buy Looking In (the expanded edition) being that the entire Americans book is published within it. . I was lucky enough to be given a copy of The Americans as a birthday present in 1960 and its always been one of my favorite photo books A full and frank appraisal of the Americans. Now, with this huge book the original becomes even more fascinating and intriguing2009-02-24 Rating 5. To be able to see Robert Frank's application to the Guggenheim, letters to Walker Evans and Jack Kerouac, a map and itinerary for the photo journey across America and his original working sequence of prints for the book puts the eighty-three photos in perspective. Sarah Greenhough's four essays (she is one of the seven contributors) puts him in the context of the Cold War and consumer culture times and I thought her essay about the opposition to The Americans particularly interesting (the Family of Man exhibition had a lot to answer for, though Frank had seven photos in it). She also writes about various editions and the different printing techniques that were used. This turns out to be rather important because the viewer's perception of the photos can vary according to what copy they see. The original French and Grove Press editions were printed gravure and many of the photos were tightly cropped so that they were perceived as hard-edge images of America. Later editions, from Aperture (two) Pantheon, Scalo and Steidl sometimes used larger photos with less severe cropping. All of this is revealed in the back of the book with thumbnails of the original photos with repeats to show how the various editions presented their versions. The reality is that black and white prints cannot adequately be printed in one black pass through a press, to do it properly they have to be duotones or tritones. The Americans in this book look stunning as they are printed as tritones (probably from the same plates that Steidl used for a re-issue of The Americans in 2008). The cherry on the cake for me with this book are the eighty-three pages of contact prints (done as duotones) with Frank's selection pulled out in the red grease crayon he used. How extraordinary to see alternate versions of photos that I've looked at over and over in the original book and to see more than 2500 negatives that he took in his travels. Looking In is a remarkable (and beautifully produced) book that really does cover everything you'll need to know about a publishing event more than five decades ago. BTW there is a paperback edition that does NOT include the contact prints, sequence and subsequent editions cropping pages or the correspondence and archive material. It is 144 pages fewer than this expanded edition. ***SEE SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover. A wonderful edition of a classic A magnificent, scholarly edition of a classic. This book is bigger than a telephone directory, so the photos that make up the published version of The Americans are only a small part of it2009-02-22 Rating 5. Around those are many other images from Frank's early career, maps, the contact sheets from his three trips, and a good deal of other documentation. But the bulk of the book is made up by a series of very scholarly essays: on Frank's development before and after The Americans, on his connections with other photographers, with Kerouac and the Beat poets and so on. A more or less encyclopedic treatment. Get it. It is an education in one volume. First published in France in 1958, then in the United States in 1959, Robert Frank's The Americans changed the course of twentieth-century photography In 83 photographs, Frank looked beneath the surface of American life to reveal a people plagued by racism, ill-served by their politicians and rendered numb by a rapidly expanding culture of consumption. Yet he also found novel areas of beauty in simple, overlooked corners of American life