With the aid of his major artistic influence, the photographer Walker Evans, Frank secured a grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 1955 to travel across the United States and photograph its society at all strata. He took his family along with him for part of his series of road trips over the next two years, during which time he took 28,000 shots. Only 83 of those were finally selected by him for publication in The Americans. Frank's journey was not without incident. While driving through arkansas, Frank was arbitrarily thrown in jail after being stopped by the police; elsewhere in the South, he was told by a sheriff that he had "an hour to leave town."
This divergence from contemporary photographic standards gave Frank difficulty at first in securing an American publisher. Les Américains was first published in 1958 by Robert Delpire in Paris, and finally in 1959 in the United States by Grove Press, where it initially received substantial criticism. Popular Photography, for one, derided his images as "meaningless blur, grain, muddy exposures, drunken horizons and general sloppiness." Though sales were also poor at first, Kerouac's introduction helped it reach a larger audience because of the popularity of the Beat phenomenon. Over time and through its inspiration of later artists, The Americans became a seminal work in American photography and art history, and is considered the work with which Frank is most clearly identified. In 1961, Frank received his first individual show, entitled Robert Frank: Photographer, at the art institute of Chicago. He also showed at MoMA in New York in 1962.
"The Americans" shows the country and its people in a boldly honest way. Robert Frank showed the effects of racism, social inequality and poverty. But he also showed a beautiful side of America's people and places. The book was revolutionary for the inventive style of taking photographs that show immediacy and emotional honesty. "The Americans" was also different from other photography books because Frank organized the images according to similar emotions, forms or subjects.
"Charleston, South Carolina" ,an African-American woman holds a white baby. Frank shows the woman's dark skin next to the baby's light skin. You can see the wisdom and experience in her face, which is very different from the baby's wondering expression. Here Frank plays with contrasts, or opposing elements, as he does in many photographs.
"Trolley-New Orleans" shows a close-up image of people on a public transportation vehicle. Frank frames the photograph so that you mainly see the people looking out the windows of the trolley. There are white people in the front and black people in the back. This is a powerful image about racial separation in society at that time.
"U.S. 285, New Mexico" Frank photographed the dividing mark on a highway. The road seems to go on forever into the far horizon. Jack Kerouac described the image as a "long shot of night road arrowing forlorn into immensities." 
"Rodeo -- New York City" Robert Frank pictures a thin cowboy bending his head to light his cigarette. Because of his clothing, you might expect the cowboy to be in a rural environment with a horse nearby. But the image is surprising because he is standing on a crowded street in New York City.
Robert Frank once made this comment about his work: "I am always looking outside, trying to look inside, trying to say something that is true. But maybe nothing is really true. Except what is out there. And what's out there is constantly changing."
--the information is coming from voa and Wikipedia
and you can see more photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/dogstar901/RobertFrankTheAmericans
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