As diners are a main aspect of the northeast American culture, I decided to focus the dig deeper section of this project on further exploring diners in my area. The typical diner usually serves classic American food at a relatively low price and in an informal setting. Furthermore, I know that politicians will sometimes go to their small town diner to soften their image or interact with the local community. Overall, I wanted to focus on diners because they are so ingrained into my day to day life that I sometimes forget that they do not exist in other parts of the world or even in other areas in the United States.
I thought that taking photos was the best way to capture the essence of a diner. While I could describe the look of the spinny blue stools or shiny marble countertops, a picture is able to display so much more of the overall environment. Furthermore, I have been taking Photo I this trimester with Mr. Weathersby and thought that this project would be a good way to bring in interdisciplinary studies. In photography class, I have learned a lot about framing, composition, and color editing, so I kept some of these skills in mind as I took these photos. I drew inspiration from “The Sweet Flypaper of Life” by Roy DeCarava and Langston Hughes for my photographs. I had thought about creating little captions to attach to each photo, but then decided against this in order to let the photos somewhat speak for themselves.
I focused mainly on the Morristown Diner because that is local to me in terms of where I live. I had actually never been to the Morristown Diner until a year ago. After seeing off my mom at the airport, my dad and I were driving home at about three o'clock in the morning. We were a bit hungry and wanted to see which food establishments were open at that hour and discovered that the Morristown Diner was open all twenty-four hours in a day. Since then, my family and I have gone back not only for the food, but also for the homey feeling and emotional connection we have developed with this diner. In addition, I added three extra photos of the Summit Diner because that is local to me in terms of my school. I felt that these images were important because the Summit Diner has a bit of a more unique diner appearance because it has a railcar style to it.
I created this project for my Local Literature elective of AP English.