A celebrated return of Robert Frank’s seminal photobook, The Americans, to Aperture’s catalog — one of the most important bodies of photographic work ever made

In the nearly seven decades since its publication in France in 1958, and in the United States in 1959, Robert Frank’s The Americans has become one of the most influential and enduring works of American photography. Through eighty-three photographs taken across the country, Frank unveiled an America that had gone previously unacknowledged — confronting its people with an underbelly of racial inequality, corruption and injustice, and the stark reality of the American Dream. Frank’s point of view — at once startling and tenacious — is imbued with humanity and lyricism, painting a poignant and incomparable portrait of the nation at a turning point in history.

This edition of The Americans is a celebrated return of an iconic title to Aperture’s catalog, more than a half-century after the Aperture and Museum of Modern Art edition was published in 1968. Presented on the centennial of Frank’s birth and a major exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, it has been produced following the finest tritone printing from the 2008 edition for which Frank was personally involved in every step of the design and production. 

Frank’s exacting vision, distinct style, and poetic insight changed the course of twentieth-century photography, and influenced subsequent generations of photographers, including Lee Friedlander, Nan Goldin, Danny Lyon, Joel Meyerowitz, Ed Ruscha, and Garry Winogrand. Now extolled as one of the most groundbreaking photobooks of all time, The Americans remains as powerful and provocative as it was upon publication and continues to resonate with audiences today.

About the Authors:

Robert Frank (born in Zurich, 1924; died in Nova Scotia, 2019) was a Swiss American photographer and documentary filmmaker. He is best known for his seminal book The Americans, first published in 1958, which gave rise to a distinct new art form in the photobook, and his experimental film Pull My Daisy, made in 1959. His other important projects include the books The Lines of my Hand (1972) and Black White and Things (1954), and the films Cocksucker Blues (1972) and Me and My Brother (1968).

Jack Kerouac (born in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1922; died in St. Petersburg, Florida, 1969) was an American novelist, writer, poet, and artist, best known for his novel, On the Road. He was one of the pioneers of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. 

This book is dedicated to Frank’s film and video oeuvre. Containing film-stills, essays and summaries of each film, as well as comprehensive bibliographic and technical data, it is the definitive companion to Frank’s films. With essays by Michael Barchet, Philip Brookman, Stefan Grissemann, Kent Jones, Thomas Mießgang, Pia Neumann, Bert Rebhandl, Amy Taubin Interview with Allen Ginsberg.

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 eighty-three 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. And it was not just Frank’s subject matter — cars, jukeboxes, and even the road itself — that redefined the icons of America; it was also his seemingly intuitive, immediate, off-kilter style, as well as his method of brilliantly linking his photographs together thematically, conceptually, formally, and linguistically, that made The Americans so innovative. More of an ode or a poem than a literal document, the book is as powerful and provocative today as it was fifty-six years ago.