Les Américains. Photographies de Robert Frank.

Paris, Encyclopédie Essentielle, Robert Delpire Éditeur, 1958. . First edition; oblong 8vo (185 x 210 mm, 7¼ x 8¼ in); black-and-white photographs printed in gravure by Draeger Frères, Montrouge, texts by various authors selected by Alain Bosquet; plain endpapers, laminated white paper-covered boards illustrated with an illustration by Saul Steinberg printed in light blue, black, and red, spine leaning, head and foot of spine tapped, fine; 172, [2]pp.
An uncommonly fine copy of the first published edition of Robert Frank's The Americans, a book that altered the course of twentieth-century photography and held a mirror to the American people. In his successful application for a Guggenheim grant, Frank wrote: 'The project I have in mind is one that will shape itself as it proceeds… The material is there; the practice will be in the photographer's hand, the vision in his mind.' Between April 1955 and June 1956, he set out on a series of trips across America. He aimed to complete a body of work that would be 'a broad, voluminous picture record of things American, past and present... A visual study of a civilisation.'

Les Américains follows a careful and complex sequence, with four chapters, each exploring a different aspect of American culture and introduced by a photograph of the American flag. In this, the first edition, the photographs are accompanied by a series of texts by various writers selected by Alain Bosquet.
Regards à travers Le Livre 120; The Open Book pp172–3; The Photobook: A History I, p247; Auer Collection p375; Swiss Photobooks pp218–227, pp666–7.