THE LINES OF MY HAND

Robert Frank

9 x 12 softcover book unpaged and profusely illustrated with numerous black-and-white reproductions, contact sheets, and montages. A beautifully designed and printed edition that leaves the later Pantheon edition in the dust.

Originally published in 1972 by Yugensha, Tokyo, this edition was brought out later the same year by Ralph Gibson's Lustrum Press in this softbound edition. As Parr and Badger explain in The Photobook: A History, "If Lustrum had done nothing except make this cheap edition of the Japanese book available, it would have been contribution enough to the history of the photobook...In many ways The Lines of My Hand can be regarded as the apotheosis of stream-of-consciousness photography...." They go on to say, "everything [Frank] does is a diary, a confession. Nevertheless, the book follows a broadly chronological path through his photographic career, including early work in Europe, South America and Great Britain through to The Americans and the Bus Project...since he is [the book's] primary subject, the diaristic confessional of the book is the ideal showcase."

Robert Frank's autobiographical The Lines of My Hand, considered by many to be one of the most important photographic books of the 20th Century, was first published in Japan in the early 1970s as a deluxe, slipcased edition. In 1972 it was issued as a paperback edition by Lustrum Press, New York.

"I have come home and I'm looking through the window. Outside it's snowing, no waves at all. The beach is white, the fence posts are gray. I'm looking back at a world now gone forever. Thinking of a time that will never return. A book of photographs is looking at me. Twenty-five years of looking for the right road. Postcards from everywhere. If there are any answers I have lost them." -- Robert Frank

Price: $400.00
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