Newburgh, New York, 1955

Before the publication of The Americans this was the image from the book most frequently reproduced. It struck a chord among the rapidly growing culture of disaffected youth. It recalls Marlon Brando's character in The Wild One and James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. As publisher of counterculture-oriented Evergreen Review, it was only natural that Grove Press would publish Robert Frank's book in 1959. Directed by Barney Rosset, Grove Press was known as a daring publisher which took a chance on Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot in 1954 and eventually overturned obscenity lawsuits for releasing an unexpurgated version of D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, shortly before issuing Frank's book, and for Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer a little over a year later.