In 1958, Editions Robert Delpire in Paris published Robert Frank's book Les Américains in the "Encyclopédie essentielle" collection. One year later, GrovePress Publishers in New-York published The Americans, with a preface by Jack Kerouac. This book marked the history of art indelibly, and was to become one of the founding works of modernity in photography. Robert Frank was born in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1924, and moved to New-York in 1947. It was on the advice of Walker Evans that Frank conceived his project to make a long journey across the United States in 1955 and 1956, and for which he obtained a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation.

"I wish to make an authentic contemporary document which has such a strong visual impact that it requires no commentary whatsoever" wrote Frank in his letter of application. He travelled the lenght and breadth of the country by car with his wife Mary and their two children, Pablo and Andrea, visiting not only the large cities (Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, New-York) but also the most out-of-the-way places. His photographs made widely contrasting impacts: misunderstood and indeed rejected by the critics and the general public, they immediately won the tributes of his peers.

Frank's approach was totally innovative, and completely upset the references of photographic style such as they were commonly accepted at that time. The artist's radically subjective eye and his personnal involvement have influenced a large number of photographers over the last forty years.

"The fact that Frank reacted to America often with bitterness, sometimes hope, and with a deep fascination is confirmed simply by looking at the pictures he took of people, of roadsides, of urban hells, and above all of children - angels and demons. Frank displays an intense irony with regard to a nation which is totally lacking in it, casting a detached adult's eye on the more or less infantile levels of the contained in a coherent set of photographs.

Walker Evans