London / Wales.

association copy

An important presentation copy inscribed to Frank's friend and publisher Motomura Kazuhiko:

'May 7. 2003 / Dear Kazuhiko Motomura / Why not – we can make / another book / only – we must / start now? / This is your friend / Robert – in Washington / looking at all thes [sic] old photos / always with so much respect for you / your friend again.....'

Frank visited London in the winter of 1951-52 with his wife Mary and young son Pablo. During this trip, he visited Bill Brandt, whose work he greatly admired. Inspired by Brandt's books The English at Home (1936) and A Night in London (1938), Frank explored the possibility of making his own study of the British social classes. Additionally informed by Brassaï's Paris de Nuit (1932) and André Kertész's Day of Paris (1945), Frank considered sequencing his project as a diary of daily life, going so far as to categorise a number of the images on his contact sheets as 'night' or 'afternoon'.

A year later, Frank returned to Britain and party inspired by Richard Llewelyn's poignant novel How Green Was My Valley (1939); he twice travelled to the southwestern Welsh mining towns of Maesteg and Caerau, seeking the isolated communities that lived and worked there. During this time, Frank began to understand that he could not adequately represent real life or his experiences with a single photograph and that photographs best served these purposes in a sequence. This realisation leads to his groundbreaking work The Americans (1958 & 1959).

First edition, inscribed in black ink on half-title; 4to (239 x 193 mm, 9½ x 7½ in); black & white photographs printed in offset; plain endpapers, black cloth-covered boards, titles to spine in grey, photo-illustrated dust-jacket, white, text in black, minor shelfwear, near-fine in Motomura Kazuhiko's card sleeve titled in black ink on upper side, photocopy of list exhibited works shown at the Corcoran Gallery, Washington laid in; 126, [2]pp.