Flower is

Folio (342 x 251 mm), pp.[112]. 81 black-and-white photographs. Original grey silk boards, spine and front blocked in dark grey. Original grey cloth slipcase with black-and-white photograph tipped on to one side. Original shipping carton with markings from adhesive tape. Fine copy and slipcase, carton near-fine.

First edition, one of 500 copies. Flower Is begins with photographs taken in Paris of flowers and flower sellers, continues in a car factory in Detroit and ends with polaroids made in Nova Scotia. Frank writes: ‘By 1949 I had lived in New York City for two years. When I returned to Paris, I was 26. The beauty of that city touched me… Every day I would go out to look at the way Parisians sold and loved their flowers. Returning to America I began to look at Americans… and began to photograph the city and factory which produced the American car. The summer of 1955 was hot and after two days at the River Rouge Plant in Detroit I was told to leave the factory. I travelled south and was astonished to see black people treated as inferiors. I experienced the suspicion against anything not “American”. I was learning about American determination to win. It was a society respecting Power and Money… Flowers of Paris is memory… After the publication of The Americans in 1959, a slow fade begins. Filmmaking replaces the single frame photograph.’

Parr, M. and Badger, G., The Photobook: A History Vol.I, p.264.