collectible facsimile of Frank’s very first book — made before The Americans: ” In 1946, just before he immigrated to the United States, Robert Frank constructed a handmade book of photographs titled “40 Fotos”. Although he had been photographing for only five years, the book displays a remarkable mastery of a wide range of photographic styles and genres popular in his native Switzerland during World War II – , from Bauhaus inspired explorations of light and form to commercial studies of industrial objects and journalistic records of people on the streets. With its front cover of a photomontage of an eye seen through an open camera lens and its back cover of a closed lens, the book also reveals Frank’s careful study of contemporary Swiss graphic design. When Frank immigrated to New York from Zurich in 1947, having apprenticed with commercial photographers in his hometown, he brought along this portfolio to help him secure employment. Portfolio is the facsimile version of this fascinating object. Containing Frank’s earliest original photographs as well as work by other photographers which he had retouched, the portfolio presents images of rural life in Switzerland alongside alpine landscapes, cityscapes and still-lifes. The original handmade object is held in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington.”