Robert Frank Books

Discover the secret to a healthy and happy life with Shorinji Kempo's unique philosophy. This modern Japanese martial art and spiritual discipline, founded by the Zen Buddhist monk and soldier Doshin So in 1947, teaches how true strength and happiness can be achieved through a combination of physical and mental practice. Stressing the importance of a balance between robust self-reliance and compassionate interaction with others, it is the true heir to the ancient Shaolin temple tradition of the pursuit of enlightenment through martial arts training. This book contains practical advice for students of the art as well as more universal teachings concerning the value of self-discipline, the indissoluble link between body and mind and how helping others and improving yourself are the key to a happy life, lessons that will resonate with practitioners and the general reader alike. With a foundation in Zen Buddhism but drawing on sources from the ancient Greek philosophers to modern psychology, Shorinji Kempo Philosophy shows how the unique combination of tough but enjoyable training in self-defence techniques, combined with an ongoing philosophical and spiritual enquiry into the true nature of reality, can make and keep you strong, flexible, self-reliant and joyful in both mind and body.

In this book, I make use of an idea from economics to suggest how noble human tendencies might not only have survived the ruthless pressures of the material world, but actually have been nurtured by them.

After completing his seminal photography book The Americans in 1958, Robert Frank put aside the still image and concentrated throughout the 1960s on film-making. He only returned to still photography in the 1970s, using a Polaroid camera with black-and-white positive/negative film. These images were frequently layered with text, which Frank inscribed by hand onto the Polaroid negative. He found that these works allowed him more freedom to "destroy that image, that perfect image." In recent years Frank has worked almost exclusively with Polaroids, exploring the collage and assemblage possibilities of the instant photograph.Originally announced as Robert Polaroids , This slipcased collection of small, staple-bound books represents a new stage in the practice of a remarkable artist who continually challenges the limits of photography and film, and strives to avoid repeating himself. It brings together seven sequences of single new images compiled by Frank. As always, the photographs and stories relate Frank's life and milieu--his homes in Mabou and New York, for example, or trips to China and Spain.

When Robert Frank had completed his first two films, he accepted a commission for a photo-book from the New York Times, which became Zero Mostel Reads a Book. In it Frank takes the comic actor Zero Mostel (1915–1977) for hissubject, and depicts him in cartoonish dimensions–bemused, baffled and apoplectic, as he makes his way through an unidentified hardback volume, seated at a table or on a sofa in a large lounge area. Originally published “for the fun of it” in 1963 and dedicated to the American bookseller, the book was intended as a present for customers yet it never reached the book market. It has been a collector’s item since. Zero Mostel Reads a Book references a series of theatrical and playful vignettes in which Mostel’s most famous roles–Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and Max Bialystock in The Producers–are clearly signaled. It is a delightful moment of slapstick in Frank’s oeuvre, and directly reflects his emphasis on the moving image at the time.

Focusing on syntactic theory, Robert Frank integrates Tree Adjoining Grammar (TAG) with the minimalist framework, highlighting the mathematical and computational strengths of TAG. He argues that its restrictive operations streamline the understanding of grammatical competence, especially regarding syntactic movement and locality. Through detailed case studies on subject-raising constructions and wh-questions, the book illustrates the empirical benefits of this model, suggesting a grammar conception with limited computational power.

Because of the importance of Robert Frank’s The Americans; because he turned to filmmaking in 1959, the same year the book appeared in the United States; and because he made very different kinds of pictures when he returned to still photography in the 1970s, most of Frank’s American work of the 1950s is poorly known. This book, based on the important Frank collection at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, is the first to focus on that work. Its careful sequence of 131 plates integrates 22 photographs from The Americans with more than 100 unknown or unfamiliar images to chart the major themes and pictorial strategies of Frank’s work in the United States in the 1950s. Peter Galassi’s text presents a thorough reconsideration of Frank’s first photographic career and examines in detail how he used the full range of photography’s vital 35mm vocabulary to reclaim the medium’s artistic tradition from the hegemony of the magazines.

This theoretical linguistic study explores the integration of Tree Adjoining Grammar (TAG) within the minimalist framework to analyze the complexities of natural language syntax. It delves into the structural aspects of language, offering insights into syntactic phenomena and contributing to the understanding of how different grammatical systems can interact and complement one another. The work aims to advance theoretical linguistics by bridging distinct methodologies and enhancing the analysis of syntactic structures.

Explores the very meaning of happiness and prosperity in America. This title explains how increased concentrations of income and wealth at the top of the economic pyramid have set off expenditure cascades that raise the cost of achieving many basic goals for the middle class.

After The Americans, The Lines of My Hand is arguably Robert Frank’s most important book and without doubt the publication that established his autobiographical, sometimes confessional, approach to bookmaking. The book was originally published by Yugensha in Tokyo in 1972, and this new Steidl edition, made in close collaboration with Robert Frank, follows and updates the first US edition by Lustrum Press of 1972. The Lines of My Hand is structured chronologically and presents selections from every stage of Frank’s work until 1972—from early photos in Switzerland in 1945–46, to images of his travels in Peru, Paris, Valencia, London and Wales, and to contact sheets from his 1955–56 journey through the US that resulted in The Americans and made him famous. Here too are intimate photos of Frank’s young family, later photo-collages and stills from films including Pull My Daisy (1959) and About Me: A Musical (1971). This structure itself mirrors the rhythm of Frank’s life but it is his short personal texts, like diary entries, that fully bring his voice into the book. In its original combination of text and image, its fearless self-reflection, and its insistence on photography and film as equal though different aspects of the artist’s visual language, The Lines of My Hand has become an inspiration for many photographers—not least Robert Frank himself, who continues and expands this approach in the visual diaries he makes today.