Les Américains by Robert Frank, 1958, True First Edition, First Printing

This is a 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 Very Good+ with rubs to the head and heel of the spine resulting in some paper loss, surface wear to the cover including a scratch to the glaze on the rear cover, and some mild foxing to the endpapers, 

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 as well as stock photographs contained in the book appear in the photo section of the listing.