Sarah Greenough; et al. — Looking in: Robert Frank's the Americans

Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art / Steidl, 2009. first. Softcover. White wraps with bw illustration. 384 pages. Many photos. "First published in France in 1958, then 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 his 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 years ago."--Jacket. Contents as follows: Foreword / Earl A. Powell III -- Introduction / Sarah Greenough -- Zurich to New York, 1924-1954 -- Guggenheim Fellowship, 1955-1957 -- Americans, 1958-1959 -- Destroying The Americans, 1960-2008 -- Acknowledgments / Sarah Greenough. Catalog of an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Jan. 18-Apr. 26, 2009; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, May 16-Aug. 23, 2009; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sept. 22-Dec. 27, 2009./ Includes bibliographical references (pages 359-365) and index. New in Shrinkwrap .