By consensus Frank's The Americans is perhaps the most important photo book of the last half century even though those who don't have a clear sense of what was available before and after may not fully understand why. Indeed, his style (in its most generic sense) has become so mainstream or at least popular that his book seems quite tame, almost banal. Looking In (and the exhibit it references) is essential for understanding the context and influence of the Frank book. In the first instance it makes clear why so many of the photos in the Frank book are important and ultimately unsettling. There are lucid discussions of his choices in making, developing, and presenting the photos. It also provides a nice set of essays tracing Frank's career and the various journeys he took while making the photos. Essays on the folks who influenced him (especially Walker Evans) are quite illuminating. The volume also contains many of the pictures he took before The Americans, a bonus, as well as all those in The Americans. Thus for those who do not own the original book,this volume contains the original at relatively little extra cost (maybe $10) (but in a much larger and heavier format). The hardcover edition contains some extra material, mostly as I recall contact prints which allow comparisons of versions chosen for the book with similar ones not. For my purposes the paperback version contains the essential material and is much cheaper. The actual exhibit (which I saw in San Francisco and is now in NYC) did a nice job of explaining the sequencing of the photos (Frank was obsessed with this) and providing some insights into why certain photos are important. The exhibit notes were more focused that those in Looking In and I found the exhibit notes more helpful. However, bottom line is that this is essential reading (and looking) for anyone with more than a passing interest in modern photography, especially those who cannot see the exhibit.
To be able to see Robert Frank's application to the Guggenheim, letters to Walker Evans and Jack Kerouac, a map and itinerary for the photo journey across America and his original working sequence of prints for the book puts the eighty-three photos in perspective. Sarah Greenhough's four essays (she is one of the seven contributors) puts him in the context of the Cold War and consumer culture times and I thought her essay about the opposition to The Americans particularly interesting (the Family of Man exhibition had a lot to answer for, though Frank had seven photos in it).
She also writes about various editions and the different printing techniques that were used. This turns out to be rather important because the viewer's perception of the photos can vary according to what copy they see. The original French and Grove Press editions were printed gravure and many of the photos were tightly cropped so that they were perceived as hard-edge images of America. Later editions, from Aperture (two) Pantheon, Scalo and Steidl sometimes used larger photos with less severe cropping. All of this is revealed in the back of the book with thumbnails of the original photos with repeats to show how the various editions presented their versions. The reality is that black and white prints cannot adequately be printed in one black pass through a press, to do it properly they have to be duotones or tritones. The Americans in this book look stunning as they are printed as tritones (probably from the same plates that Steidl used for a re-issue of The Americans in 2008).
The cherry on the cake for me with this book are the eighty-three pages of contact prints (done as duotones) with Frank's selection pulled out in the red grease crayon he used. How extraordinary to see alternate versions of photos that I've looked at over and over in the original book and to see more than 2500 negatives that he took in his travels.
Looking In is a remarkable (and beautifully produced) book that really does cover everything you'll need to know about a publishing event more than five decades ago.
BTW there is a paperback edition that does NOT include the contact prints, sequence and subsequent editions cropping pages or the correspondence and archive material. It is 144 pages fewer than this expanded edition.
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