Highway Restaurant, Jersey City
Dan Graham American
Not on view
Graham made this photograph of a then recently built roadside diner around the time that his landmark photo-essay "Homes for America" first appeared in Arts magazine. In the piece, the artist related the serial, repetitive patterns and primary structures of Minimalism to the postwar suburban tract housing of Levittown and Fair Lawn-the architectural emblems of alienation and social anomie. Made at a time when respectable camera work was solely black and white, Graham's architectural pictures were deliberately garish in palette to evoke the shared industrial coloring of Minimalist sculpture and prefabricated siding; likewise, his framing and composition were intentionally flatfooted to distinguish them from the discreetly veiled virtuosity of contemporary street photography.
