Les Américains.

£22,500 · Offered by Shapero Rare Books

association copy An important presentation copy of the first published edition of Robert Frank's The Americans, a book that altered the course of twentieth-century photography and held a mirror to the American people, inscribed to Frank's friend and publisher Motomura Kazuhiko: 'To Kazuhiko Motomura / who sees / what I see / and speaks Japanese / with my respects / Robert Frank. / NYC Oct. 30. 70.' Motomura Kazuhiko was a civil servant who grew up watching Akira Kurosawa films, which led to his interest in visual art and black-and-white photography. He was an important collector of photographs and photography books and a tireless champion of Japanese photographers, promoting their work and supporting their books and exhibitions. He published four books over a 37-year period: Robert Frank's The Lines of My Hand (1972), Flower Is (1987), and The Americans: 81 Contact Sheets (2009); Jun Morinaga's River, its shadow of shadows (1978); and helped organise or distribute others, including Mochizuki Masao's Television (2001) and Suzuki Kiyoshi's Tenmaku No Machi [A Town of Tents]: Mind Games (1982). In 1960, Motomura worked as a tax officer. While still employed, he enrolled in the Shashin Sōgō Senmon Gakkō (now Tokyo College of Photography), where he was taught by Ishimoto Yasuhiro and Shigemori Koen. After participating in the demonstrations against the 1960 renewal of the US-Japanese security treaty, Motomura resigned from his position, fearing that his employers might penalise

• Binding: Hardcover

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