This landmark collection from Robert Frank inspired artists from Nan Golden to Lee Friedlander. Robert Frank's plaintive black and white images captured the stark sense of aimlessness that undercut the seemingly upward boom of the 1950’s. "That crazy feeling in America, when the sun is hot on the streets and the music comes out of the jukebox or from a nearby funeral," Jack Kerouac wrote in the introduction. Life was not the same idyllic suburban dream for everyone. Times were hard and people were afraid; the cold war was reaching its peak level, the civil rights movement was just beginning, and many had not recovered from the hardships of World War II. Robert Frank sensed this and set out across the country, searching for the images that would tell the truth to a culture who seemed to have convinced themselves that the hardest part was behind them. "It would be a mistake, however, to call Frank a documentary photographer," Malcom Jones notes in a recent Newsweek article commemorating the 50th anniversary of the book's release. "There was nothing objective about his pictures. Jack Kerouac's preface to the original American edition lauded Frank's ability to suck 'a sad poem right out of America onto film,' and Kerouac ranked Frank not among other photographers but 'among the tragic poets of the world.

In 1958, the first edition of Robert Frank’s The Americans was published in Paris. Les Americains contained Robert Frank’s 83 photographs in the same sequence as all subsequent editions, with the image on the right hand page, but juxtaposed with historical texts about American society and politics, gathered by Alain Bosquet. The following year, in the first American edition, the French texts were removed and an introduction by Jack Kerouac was added. Over the subsequent 50 years, The Americans has been republished in many editions, in numerous languages, with a variety of cover designs, and even in a range of sizes. It is the most famous photography book ever published, and it changed the face of the medium forever.

Robert Frank discussed with his publisher, Gerhard Steidl, the idea of producing a new edition using modern scanning and the finest tritone printing. The starting point was to bring original prints from New York to Gottingen, Germany, where Steidl is based. In July 2007, Frank visited Gottingen. A new format for the book was worked out and new typography selected. A new cover was designed and Frank chose the book cloth, foil for embossing, and the endpaper. Most significantly, as he has done for every edition of The Americans, Frank changed the cropping of many of the photographs, usually including more information. Two images were changed completely from the original 1958 and 1959 editions. This book is the 50th anniversary version of Robert Frank’s classic. Hardcover, 8.25 x 7.25 inches. 180 pages. 83 tritone.

From Publishers Weekly
In this 50th anniversary reissue, celebrated photographer Frank maintains the format (left page: brief caption, right page: photo) and introduction (Jack Kerouac: "with the agility, mystery, genius, sadness and strange secrecy of a shadow Frank photographed scenes that have never been seen before on film"), the images themselves have been re-scanned, re-cropped by Frank and, in two cases, changed. Frank's images, taken all across the country, leave the viewer with a solemn impression of American life. From funerals to drug store cafeterias to parks, Frank recorded every shade of everyday life he encountered: the lower and upper classes, the living and dead, the hopeful and destitute, all the while experimenting with angle, focus and grain to increase impact. Preceding an exhibition that will tour U.S. galleries in 2009, this volume will no doubt introduce new generations to Frank's inimitable record of daily life fifty years ago. Kerouac says, fittingly, that "after seeing these pictures you end up finally not knowing any more whether a jukebox is sadder than a coffin"; those who don't comprehend Kerouac's comment have yet to experience this classic collection. 83 tritone plates.
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