America Worked: The 1950s Photographs of Dan Weiner (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Dan Weiner (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Reproduced here are 170 black-and-white photographs by photojournalist Weiner, whose work appeared regularly in Fortune magazine in the 1950s before his death in a plane crash in 1959, aged 39. He treated his usual suburban subjects--backyards and barbecues, commuters, corporate execs, kaffeeklatsches--with a gentle subversivity which, as Ewing ( The Fugitive Gesture: Dance and Photography ) points out, often belied the effusive copy accompanying his shots ("Like all Kaiser men, he seems to be having a hell of a good time"captions an expressively angry argument held in a spartan boardroom). In contrast to the ironic photos of giddy suburbanism dominating this collection are others taken in the style of Walker Evans, whom Weiner greatly admired: sensitive, respectful portraits of the poor and the old; a striking study of a white woman on an otherwise empty bus during the Montgomery bus boycott in 1956; a toy-horn vendor, ignored by the crowd in Times Square on New Year's Eve, 1951. Tiger offers a concise, observant and funny introduction to the decade that Weiner ably documented.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Harry N Abrams (July 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810911779
• ISBN-13: 978-0810911772
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,498,734 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars "What makes this country great is the creation of wants and desires", April 12, 2009

By	Robin Benson - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The heading above is from Vance Packard's 1957 book 'The Hidden Persuaders' quoted on page 140 of America worked. Throughout this interesting book of photos there are other quotes, mostly from Fortune magazine (who Weiner frequently worked for) which have been chosen to tie-in with the images and they help to give the pages an extra punch.

I think the photos really do capture the feel of the white, middle class, suburb living, conformist, nuclear families of the fifties, who were, after all, the driving force of the economy. The chapter heads give a flavor of the contents: Prospects and promises; The hard sell; Organization man; A woman's world; Nuclear families; Success stories, for example. Weiner's camera looks in on the work and domestic life of these people without comment. The Organization man chapter is particularly revealing with just fifteen photos so much is said: corporate recruitment; trainees; sales meetings; the golf club; wives socializing; moving into a new suburb (Park Forest, Illinois is featured a lot throughout the book) and the last photo, the well known one of the commuters arriving home on the 4:51 from Chicago.

The last chapter, The Lonely crowd I thought was rather out of place and maybe the photos of police work, a psychiatric hospital, a couple of Montgomery, Alabama from 1956, a NYC news vendor among others were to show the range of Weiner's assignments though this aspect of the fifties has really been summed up by Frank's The Americans.

The design and production of the book is fine except for the glaring problem of the coarse screen used: 133! Most of the photos have plenty of detail that need to be seen and if the book was published in the last few years I bet it would be 200 to 250 and printed on a good matt art paper.

***SEE SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.