The diner is the epitome of Americana, conjuring up images of bobby soxers and jocks with tall glasses of soda, or businessmen in fedoras eating a burger before their afternoon appointment, or working stiffs glad of a cheap meal. The name is embedded in a web of associations familiar from films, even for those of us who have never set foot inside one.
Gerd Kittel has photographed a selection of these establishments for Diners: People and Places (1990, updated 1998) in a way that preserves the nostalgia they evoke. The 68 images, taken in New England, New York and New Jersey (with one outlier in San Francisco), show them inside and out, in all weathers, day and night, close up and in the distance. The basic concept is capable of a wide variety of styles in its execution (both the diners and the photography).
Patrons depicted are generally of maturer years, today’s equivalent of bobby soxers not much in evidence, and are overwhelmingly white. The general mood seems to be contemplative, inevitably putting one in mind of Edward Hopper alienation, when one might assume such an intimate space would lend itself to conviviality. The counter, a universal characteristic of diners, allows customers to face forward and ignore the surroundings.
Richard F Snow provides an introduction tracing the history of the diner from its origins as a mobile ‘lunch wagon’ in 1872. He disposes of ‘the apparently indestructible myth’ that diners were redundant railway carriages. Some early ones were housed in horsecars no longer required by street railway companies as they electrified, but for the most part they were just built to look like rolling stock.
He notes that the diner is under threat (and Kittel includes a forlorn interior of a disused one), but includes an anecdote concerning a diner which was abandoned when the owner retired, then brought back into use when someone else spotted a business opportunity. With the proliferation of fast-food outlets, however, the diner is fighting to survive, and while the photographs exercise a rosy glow, and the diner will surely always have a niche in the restaurant economy, there is little room for sentiment in business.
The Joy of Mere Words 