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Robert Frank . Mary’s Book

€65.00

MFA Boston

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In Stock

Celebrating the centennial of photographer Robert Frank’s (1924–2019) birth, this exhibition takes an in-depth look at the personal scrapbook of photographs Frank made for Mary Lockspeiser, the woman who became his first wife, titled Mary’s Book. Created in 1949, the one-of-a-kind, handmade book represents a formative moment in Frank’s career, when he experimented with juxtaposing images and text. Seventy-four small photographs and their accompanying inscriptions reveal Frank’s appreciation for the poetic resonance of objects and spaces. Many of the photographs are devoid of people, although a human presence is felt everywhere, such as pages where Frank muses on the chairs and streets of Paris with messages interspersed for Mary. The book is a reflection on solitary contemplation that reads like a lyrical poem and compelling personal photographic sequence.

“Robert Frank: Mary’s Book” features spreads from the album in the MFA’s collection as well as photographs Frank took in Paris, on loan from the artist’s foundation. It is accompanied by a publication that reproduces Mary’s Book in its entirety for the first time.

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.

Robert Frank . Mary’s Book

Hardcover     
ISBN: 978-0-87846-900-0
136 pages + 24 page facsimile;
9 x 12.5 in
75 color illustrations


About the Author

Stuart Alexander is an independent curator and scholar based in France, and currently Director of Research, The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation.
Kristen Gresh is Estrellita and Yousuf Karsh Senior Curator of Photographs, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

7 Items
2025-08-11

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