Black, White and Things

Book excerpt: Containing photographs taken between 1948 and 1952, Black White and Things was in its original form a book hand-crafted by Robert Frank in 1952. Frank made three identical copies designed by Werner Zryd, each with spiral binding and original photographs. Printed for an exhibition at the National Gallery in Washington in 1994, Frank has now redesigned the book. Separated into three categories "black", "white", and "things", which are shaped more by mood than subject matter, the book traces Frank's travels to cities such as Paris, New York, Valencia and St. Louis. In the white section for instance, he brings photographs of vastly different motifs under a single aesthetic umbrella - his first wife reclining with their new-born baby, peasants squatting against a flaking wall in Peru, and a business man strolling past a snowdecked tree in London.