ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the life and careers of three U.S. postwar photographers—Arthur Leipzig, Dan Weiner, and Robert Frank—and considers them as workers, two of whom had working-class backgrounds and radical political engagements. It argues that their documentary-style photographs of labor communicated ideas about class relations and workers’ lives, offering a sobering view of U.S. class relations even in the midst of American postwar abundance. Most accounts of the trajectory of the documentary tradition after World War II claim photographers developed a personalized and depoliticized view of American life. Instead, the author maintains that these three photographers created sensitive and potentially disruptive portrayals of U.S. workers and their labors. The essay reads their photographs done as freelancers for employee magazines, a staple of twentieth-century welfare capitalism, and it examines their photographs in mass-market magazines such as LIFE and Fortune, along with midcentury photo books. Exploring the fluidity among documentary, photojournalistic, and corporate photography practices, the author relies on oral histories, archival research into the Photo League and corporate employee magazines, and published photo books and mass-market magazines.
