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| The Americans |  | Author: Robert Frank
Creator: Jack Kerouac
Publisher: Cornerhouse Publications
Category: Book
This item is no longer available
Avg. Customer Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 7298932
Format: Import
Media: Paperback
Edition: New Ed
Pages: 180
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
ISBN: 0948797835
EAN: 9780948797835
ASIN: 0948797835
Publication Date: October 29, 1993
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| Customer Reviews: Read 24 more reviews...
Robert Frank, not Jack Kerouac October 31, 2008
contrary to what is listed, The Americans is by Robert Frank, the photographer. the photos are timeless and i still use them to teach photography to college students
jack kerouac only wrote the forward.
set the record straight for non-photographers.
thank you.
 iNTERESTING September 24, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Excellent print quality.. A glance at common people in random daily-life shots. It's a book worth a place in your hands
It's not by Jack K. September 16, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book was not by Jack Kerouac. It's by Robert Frank. It's one of the seminal books in the history of photography. Many see it as a hate letter to America, but that's a shallow reading of the book. It's some of the best documentary done by a non-documentarian of the American culture of the period. If you really want to see great photography with a point of view, this is a good start.
I find lots of listings get authorship wrong when the book is about a photographer's work. Amazon needs to fix this basic flaw in their system.
The definitive "The Americans" July 28, 2008
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
We're lucky to have this edition. Robert Frank is an old man with health issues now. That he is healthy enough to oversee this work is wonderful. Everything about this edition - especially in comparison to the 2007 Delpine edition I purchased earlier this year - is first-rate. I wish I had known this was coming out!
The book is a little smaller than the Delpine, but that's the only real negative (if it is one) I can think of. The main thing to me is that the photos themselves are how Frank intended them to look. Gone are the overly-lightened faces that plague the Delpine book. This is a pet peeve of mine that kills many photos in this Photoshop age. This is very obvious in the New Orleans trolley photo. In the Delpine work, the faces of the white passengers are totally washed out, and the black faces are awkwardly lightened (someone apparently thought they were helping Frank's work). That's all corrected here. In this Steidl edition things are shown as they were intended. One can even see details in the face of the man at far left, even though it is partially obscured by a window reflection.
Also, on several photos more of the frame is visible. This was most noticeable to me in the Butte, Montana photo of the woman looking out the car window, with several children in the back seat. A good portion of the left side of the photo is now visible, along with more shown on the top and bottom. The new crop just seems more "right." Not too mention that the face of the child in the middle of the photo is too light in the older edition.
Simply put, comparing the two editions is an eye opener. I first saw these photos years ago in a much earlier edition (I believe it was the 1969 Aperture work) and I still marvel at the depth of the images in that printing. I don't have that edition in hand, so I can't do a direct comparison, but I believe the Steidl images are much closer to that ideal. Franks prefers his images a little on the flat, low-key side. Another difference is that the photos are now printed on a non-glossy paper. I was surprised at this at first, but now I believe it works much better for this book.
In short, if you want an accurate, lovingly-printed edition of The Americans at a reasonable price, this is the one. Highly recommended.
Black and White and Grey July 27, 2008
Looking at this again after many years ( I first came across it about 25 years ago) the images are as poignant as ever. This is truly a great book of photographs and is perhaps the best photojournalist's collection ever published. The new edition has all the gravity and attention to detail that the work deserves.
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