Robert Frank: Books and Films, 1947-2019

Robert Frank: Books and Films, 1947-2019 is Steidl's own account of a publishing partnership that ran for three decades and reshaped how Frank's work reached readers.

Gerhard Steidl edited the book, published in 2020 as a 120-page hardcover. It walks through more than thirty books Frank published with Steidl, reproducing spreads alongside explanatory texts, interviews, and documentary photographs of Frank at the print works in Gottingen. The relationship began in 1989, when publisher Walter Keller asked Steidl to print The Lines of My Hand for his Scalo imprint. After Scalo closed in 2004, Steidl began publishing Frank directly. That work eventually covered reprints of early books, previously unseen projects, newly conceived volumes, and a complete DVD collection of Frank's films.

Frank worked with Steidl on that footing until his death in 2019. He treated the printing process, and his habit of personally signing off every printed sheet, as part of the work rather than production overhead. Steidl offers this volume as the place to start when approaching the full range of Frank's photobooks.