The Americans

The Americans is Robert Frank’s book of 83 photographs of the United States, first published in France in 1958 and in the United States in 1959.

Frank’s subjects include cars, jukeboxes and the road itself. Steidl’s note on the book reads the pictures as a portrait of a country marked by racism, poorly served by its politicians and growing more consumerist. Frank ties the photographs to one another through theme, idea, form and language,. Steidl calls it closer to an ode or a poem than to a record of facts. This edition is an English-language clothbound hardcover of 180 pages, 18.4 by 20.9 cm.

Frank (1924–2019) was born in Zurich and moved to the United States in 1947. Steidl credits The Americans with giving rise to a distinctly new form of the photobook. His other major projects include the film Pull My Daisy (1959), the book Black White and Things (1954) and the book Lines of My Hand (1972).