Motels, Diners and Neon Lights – New Photographic Exhibition Captures the American Dream

Fox Talbot Museum, Wiltshire, 9 January – 27 June, 2010

The faded glamour of the roadside diners, motels and cinemas that epitomised the American dream of the 1950s and 1960s is the subject of a new exhibition of photographs by Tony and Eva Worobiec at the National Trust's Fox Talbot Museum in Wiltshire, beginning on 9 January 2010.

Depicting the brash but optimistic era through neon-lit signs boasting soft beds, home cooked meals or a night of escapism, the photographs give an insight into what shaped the desires and dreams of post-war middle class in America.

Frequent visits to the USA by the Dorset-based photographers Tony and Eva Worobiec inspired them to tell the story of these buildings that have survived but which sprang up in the 1950s and 1960s for the enjoyment of growing numbers of families with cars as their leisure time increased.

“These images are as American as apple pie and George Washington,” said Roger Watson, Curator of the Fox Talbot Museum.

“Fact and fiction run together into a story of a dream that never quite materialised –where the past was for ‘squares’ and the jet-propelled future was everything. These photographs show the survivors of a time that the truly nostalgic fondly remember and the rest of us can’t believe existed at all.”

Images from the exhibition include motels with neon signs that boasted ‘Colour TV’ and ‘Air Conditioning’ to lure road weary travellers. Shiny aluminium Air-Stream caravans, or ‘diners’, offered meals or just a cup of coffee at any hour of the day or night. Red velvet and brocade furnished the inside of cinemas, lit with flashing signs, to tempt customers with the escapism of a Hollywood film.

Eva and Tony Worobiec have a prestigious body of work behind them. This exhibition follows on from their much celebrated book Ghosts in the Wilderness; Abandoned America which documents the depopulating areas of eastern Montana, western Nebraska, north and south Dakota and south-eastern Montana.

Eva’s passion for contemporary art is evident in the abstract style of her photography. Tony also comes from a fine art background and has exhibited and published widely.

The exhibition ‘Icons of the Highway’ begins at the Fox Talbot Museum, Lacock, Wiltshire on 9 January and runs until 27 June, 2010. For more information, visit www.nationaltrust.org.uk/lacock

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