He spread pictures around the floor of his apartment, tacked them up on the walls, and continually resequenced them as the final composition of his book project began to take order and form. By the time he traveled to Paris in 1957 to meet with Robert Delpire, the French publisher who had agreed to issue the first edition of The Americans, he had a fully realized book maquette in hand. Moreover, the exhibition was perceived to be an angry commentary of America at a time of aggressive self-aggrandizing efforts internationally. Frank had no particular allegiance except to that described by jazz, beat poetry and the alienated, to which the perfect and slick appearance of America did not apply. Above all, I know that life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference.
Opinion often consists of a kind of criticism, but criticism can come out of love.
It is important to see what is invisible to others, perhaps the look of hope or the look of sadness. The Americans established Frank's reputation as a major creative force in the field of contemporary photography. In the decades to follow, this body of work has become the crucial factor in the development of contemporary discourse in photography. The Americans is used as the delineation between more traditional forms of description and the hipper, more critical forms of visual poetry, including that of Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation. His profound influence can be seen in the contemporary photography of Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander.