Les Americains by Robert Frank, True First Edition

Les Americains by Robert Frank

True First Edition, 1958

This is a rare true first edition, first printing of Robert Frank’s masterpiece “Les Americans” published by Robert Delpire, Paris in 1958. Robert Frank spent most of the late 1950s making "a number of short trips out from New York and one long (nine-month) journey to the West Coast in a 1950 Ford to photograph America. 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" (Andrew Roth, The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century). Frank's Américains eventually 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, “The Photobook: A History”).

Featuring 83 full-page photogravures with text by numerous authors edited by Alain Bosquet, the book is an oblong octavo with glazed paper over boards with drawings by Saul Steinberg.  The condition of the book is Near Fine+ with minor surface wear to the cover including a scratch to the glaze on the rear cover, some foxing to the endpapers and a paper split to the free front pages (The cloth which maintains the integrity of the book is sound and undamaged). As you can see from the pictures below, this is a highly collectible copy of arguably the greatest photobook ever published.

Cited in both “The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century” by Andrew Roth and “The Photobook: A History”, by Parr and Badger.

Photographs of the book cover as well as photographs contained in the book appear below. Also included is a picture of the paper split and the foxing to the endpapers.  Please note that although the photographs appear digitized as thumbnails, they are viewable in the photo viewer by running your mouse over the thumbnail. You can also click on the thumbnail to open a separate window where the picture is viewable.