Called “a poet with a camera” by Edward Steichen, photographer Robert Frank was one of many artists who searched for creative freedom in postwar Paris. Time spent there on and off between 1949 and 1953 influenced Frank’s art and life, and stayed with him for decades. It was while in Paris in 1949 that Frank produced a seminal volume in his oeuvre: a rare, personal photobook made for his then-girlfriend. In Mary’s Book, the photographer chronicled his time in the city with his poetic, insightful, and inquisitive eye, and experimented for the first time with combining text and image. This singular object proved an important bookmaking exercise for Frank, and remains as evidence of his maturing artistic vision, which led to one of the most influential photobooks of the twentieth century, The Americans (1958).

Robert Frank: Mary’s Book reproduces the love letter in full for the first time, accompanied by insightful essays from leading scholars. In this facsimile volume, recreating the series of unbound pages, nestled within each other, and filled with handwritten notes and hand-cut prints, readers can experience Paris of the late 1940s through the visual harmonies of Robert Frank.