the americans (photography) - wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Americans, 1969 2nd printing

Author Robert FrankCountry FranceLanguage French, EnglishSubject North American societyGenre PhotographicPublisher Robert Delpire, Grove Press,

SteidlPublicationdate

1958

Media type HardbackISBN ISBN 978-3-865215-84-0 (Steidl

edition)

The Americans

The Americans (photography)From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Americans, by Robert Frank, was a highlyinfluential book in post-war Americanphotography. It was first published in France in1958, and the following year in the UnitedStates. The photographs were notable for theirdistanced view of both high and low strata ofAmerican society. The book as a whole created acomplicated portrait of the period that wasviewed as skeptical of contemporary values andevocative of ubiquitous loneliness. "Frank set outwith his Guggenheim Grant to do something newand unconstrained by commercial diktats" andmade "a now classic photography book in theiconoclastic spirit of the Beats".[1]

Contents1 Background2 Introduction3 Style4 Critical views5 Publishing history6 Exhibitions7 References8 External links

BackgroundWith the aid of his major artistic influence, thephotographer Walker Evans, Frank secured aGuggenheim Fellowship from the John SimonGuggenheim Memorial Foundation[2] in 1955 totravel across the United States and photograph its society at all strata. He took his family along withhim for part of his series of road trips over the next two years, during which time he took 28,000shots. Only 83 of those were finally selected by him for publication in The Americans.

Sean O'Hagan, writing in The Guardian, about the inclusion of The Americans as the starting point inDavid Campany's critical journey into the photographic road trip, The Open Road (2014), said"Swiss-born Frank set out with his Guggenheim Grant to do something new and unconstrained bycommercial diktats. His aim was to photograph America as it unfolded before his somewhat sombreoutsiders eye. From the start, Frank defined himself against the traditional Life magazine school ofromantic reportage.[1]

The Americans (photography) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Americans_(photography)

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Frank's journey was not without incident. While driving through Arkansas, Frank was arbitrarilythrown in jail for three days after being stopped by the police who accused him of being a communist(their reasons: he was shabbily dressed, he was Jewish, he had letters about his person from peoplewith Russian sounding names, his children had foreign sounding names Pablo & Andrea, and hehad foreign whiskey with him). He was also told by a sheriff elsewhere in the South that he had "anhour to leave town."

IntroductionShortly after returning to New York in 1957, Frank met Beat writer Jack Kerouac on the sidewalkoutside a party and showed him the photographs from his travels. Kerouac immediately told Frank"Sure I can write something about these pictures," and he contributed the introduction to the U.S.edition of The Americans.[1]

StyleFrank found a tension in the gloss of American culture and wealth over race and class differences,which gave his photographs a clear contrast to those of most contemporary Americanphotojournalists, as did his use of unusual focus, low lighting and cropping that deviated fromaccepted photographic techniques.

Critical viewsThe book initially received substantial criticism in the U.S. Popular Photography, for one, deridedFrank's images as "meaningless blur, grain, muddy exposures, drunken horizons and generalsloppiness." Though sales were also poor at first, Kerouac's introduction helped it reach a largeraudience because of the popularity of the Beat phenomenon. Over time and through its inspiration oflater artists, The Americans became considered a seminal work in American photography and arthistory, and the work with which Frank is most clearly identified.

Sociologist Howard S. Becker has written about The Americans as social analysis:

Robert Frank's (...) enormously influential The Americans is in ways reminiscent both ofTocqueville's analysis of American institutions and of the analysis of cultural themes byMargaret Mead and Ruth Benedict. Frank presents photographs made in scattered placesaround the country, returning again and again to such themes as the flag, the automobile,race, restaurantseventually turning those artifacts, by the weight of the associations inwhich he embeds them, into profound and meaningful symbols of American culture.[3]

Publishing historyFrank's divergence from contemporary photographic standards gave him difficulty at first in securingan American publisher. Les Amricains was first published on 15 May 1958 by Robert Delpire inParis. Writings by Simone de Beauvoir, Erskine Caldwell, William Faulkner, Henry Miller and JohnSteinbeck were included, and many thought that Frank's photos served more to illustrate the writingrather than the converse. The cover was decorated with a drawing by Saul Steinberg.


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The Americans, 1997 6th printing (3rd Scaloedition)

In 1959, The Americans was finally published inthe United States by Grove Press, with the textremoved from the French edition due to concernsthat it was too un-American in tone. The addedintroduction by Kerouac, along with simplecaptions for the photos, were now the only textin the book, which was intended to mirror thelayout of Walker Evans' American Photographs.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of thebook's original publication (15 May 2008), anew edition was published by Steidl.[4] RobertFrank was deeply involved in the design andproduction of this edition, in which most imagesare recropped and two slightly differentphotographs are used.

Robert Frank discussed with his publisher,Gerhard Steidl, the idea of producing a newedition using modern scanning and the finest tritone printing. The starting point was to bring originalprints from New York to Gttingen, Germany, where Steidl is based. In July 2007, Frank visitedGttingen. A new format for the book was worked out and new typography selected. A new coverwas designed and Frank chose the book cloth, foil embossing and the endpaper. Most significantly, ashe has done for every edition of The Americans, Frank changed the cropping of many of thephotographs, usually including more information.

ExhibitionsFrank's photographs were on display at the Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolinaat Chapel Hill until January 4, 2009. A celebratory exhibit of The Americans were displayed in 2009at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and atThe Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

ReferencesO'Hagan, Sean (30 November 2014). "The Open Road: Photography and the American Road Trip review a survey of photographers journeys" (http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/30/open-road-photography-america-david-campany-review). The Guardian. Retrieved 15 March 2015.

1.

"Robert Frank" (http://www.gf.org/fellows/4805-robert-frank). John Simon Guggenheim MemorialFoundation. Retrieved 26 December 2015. Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)

2.

Becker, Howard S. (2009). "Photography and Sociology" (http://www.americanethnography.com/article.php?id=69). American Ethnography Quasimonthly. Retrieved 17 January 2009.

3.

"The Americans by Robert Frank" (http://www.steidlville.com/books/695-The-Americans.html). SteidlVerlag. Retrieved 2 March 2003.

4.

External linksRobert Frank's Elevator Girl sees herself years later (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112389032&ft=1&f=1008) (NPR)


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the americans (photography) - wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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