I am grateful to Cécile Whiting, Suzanne Loizeaux, and Wendy Kozol for their careful attention to earlier drafts of this essay. Joel Reed read all of the drafts with enthusiasm, offering pertinent criticism at every stage. Robert Bechtle graciously permitted me to reproduce all of his work shown here.

1. For examples of the negative critical response, see Glueck, Grace, “Previews,” Art In America, 01–02 1972, 39Google Scholar; Hughes, Robert, “An Omnivorous and Literal Dependence,” Arts Magazine, 06 1974, 25–29Google Scholar; and Rose, Barbara, “Treacle and Trash,” New York Magazine, 05 27, 1974, 80Google Scholar. Although most critics condemned photorealism, a few enjoyed the art. See, for example, Schjeldahl, Peter, “Too Easy to Be Art?” New York Times, 05 12, 1974, 23Google Scholar; and Seitz, William, “The Real and the Artificial: Painting of the New Environment,” Art In America, 11–12 1972, 69Google Scholar.

2. I am not arguing that the United States experienced a singular nostalgia during the 1960s-1970s, just that it was particularly pronounced on a mass level. For an art historical analysis of nostalgia in an earlier time, see David M. Lubin's discussion of Harnett, William's Gilded Age still-lifes in “Permanent Objects in a Changing World,” in William M. Harnett (Fort Worth, Texas: Amon Carter Museum; New York: Harry Abrams, 1992)Google Scholar.

3. For a photospread, see Lerman, Leo, “Scene/Seen: Sharp-Focus Realism,” Mademoiselle, 03 1972, 170–3+Google Scholar. For articles on collecting photorealism, see “Personal Business: Investing in Art and Antiques,” Business Week, 10 27, 1973, 105–8+Google Scholar; and Hoelterhoff, Manuela, “Strawberry Tarts Three Feet High,” Wall Street Journal, 04 21, 1976, 22Google Scholar.

4. White, Patrick, “Remembrance of Things Past,” New Orleans Review 9 (Spring/Summer 1982): 5Google Scholar.

5. Starobinski, Jean, “The Idea of Nostalgia,” trans. Kemp, William, Diogenes 54 (1966): 101Google Scholar.

6. Jameson, Fredric, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991), 19, 156, 369Google Scholar; and Jameson, , Signatures of the Visible (New York: Routledge, 1990), 130, 137Google Scholar.

7. Jameson, Fredric, “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture” [1979], in Signatures, 29Google Scholar.

8. Sontag, Susan, On Photography (New York: Doubleday, Anchor Books, 1989), 15, 124–25Google Scholar; Davis, Fred, Yearning for Yesterday: A Sociology of Nostalgia (New York: Free Press, 1979), 83Google Scholar; and Turner, Bryan, “A Note on Nostalgia,” Theory, Culture & Society 4 (1987): 150CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. “Nostalgia,” Newsweek, 12 28, 1970, 37Google Scholar; and “Why the Craze for the ‘Good Old Days,’ ” U.S. News and World Report, 11 12, 1973, 72Google Scholar. For more on nostalgia, see Starobinski, “Idea of Nostalgia.”

10. See Clarke, Gerald, “The Meaning of Nostalgia,” Time, 05 3, 1971, 77Google Scholar; and “Why the Craze,” U.S. News and World Report.

11. See Lerman, “Scene/Seen”; and “The Muted Moments of Hockey,” Sports Illustrated, 11 3, 1969, 28–33Google Scholar. Business Week magazine, in an article undoubtedly directed toward people of a higher economic class, recommended investing in photorealism in a 1973 article on art collecting, as it considered that it had not yet reached its peak value (see “Personal Business”).

12. Allen, Barbara, “In and Around,” Andy Warhol's Interview, 11 1973, 36Google Scholar. Allen also comments on the marketability of the movement, and its high demand, as the exacting technique resulted in few canvases.

13. Martin, Alvin, “Modern Realism is Really Real Modernism: Contemporary Realism in Context,” in Real, Really Real, Super Real: Directions in Contemporary American Realism (San Antonio, Texas: San Antonio Museum Association, 1981), 22Google Scholar.

14. Bechtle's paintings are quite large, and when viewed in person their size tends to diffuse the photographic effect, though this did not discourage critics from finding them nostalgic. In reproduction, however, these works could pass for casual photographs, suggesting either that critics only viewed them in reproduction or wrote from the perspective of the illustrations that would accompany their reviews.

15. For discussions of the conventions of snapshot photography, see Green, Jonathan, “Photography of Popular Culture,” Journal of the University Film Association 30 (Fall 1978): 15Google Scholar; and Jacobs, David, “Domestic Snapshots: Toward a Grammar of Motives,” Journal of American Culture 4 (Spring 1981): 95Google Scholar. In an interview, Bechtle discusses his photographic process, stating that the people he photographs are “obviously” aware of the camera and pose for it. Elsewhere he states that he takes his photographs haphazardly, contradicting the apparent conscious intention expressed in the first statement (Paul J. Karlstrom interview with Robert Bechtle, Part II [December 28, 1978], 24–25), Oral History Collections of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

16. Jacobs, , “Domestic Snapshots,” 100Google Scholar. For the intimate connection between the family and photography, also see Williamson, Judith, Consuming Passions: The Dynamics of Popular Culture (London: Marion Boyars, 1986), 115–26Google Scholar; and Coward, Rosalind, Female Desires: How They Are Sought, Bought and Packaged (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1985), 49–54Google Scholar.

17. Paul J. Karlstrom interview with Robert Bechtle, Part II (December 28, 1978), 23, Oral History Collections of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

18. May, Elaine Tyler, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic, 1988), 11Google Scholar. See also Coontz, Stephanie, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (New York: Basic, 1992), 25–29Google Scholar.

19. Green, Jonathan, American Photography: A Critical History 1945 to the Present (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1984), 48Google Scholar; and Steichen, Edward, The Family of Man (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1955)Google Scholar. For a discussion of the show's narrative form, see Sekula, Allan, “The Traffic in Photographs,” in Modernism and Modernity: The Vancouver Conference Papers, ed. Buchloh, Benjamin, Guilbaut, Serge, and Solkin, David (Halifax: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1983), 139Google Scholar.

20. Kozol, Wendy, Life's America: Family and Nation in Postwar Photojournalism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), vii, 12–15Google Scholar.

21. The father, Ozzie, in Ozzie and Harriet did not seem to have a regular job, yet this made him appealing to those in the new suburbs, where fathers were gone for most of the day. In essence, this was a nostalgic fantasy (Jones, Gerard, Honey, I'm Home! Sitcoms: Selling the American Dream [New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1992], 93Google Scholar). Father Knows Best and Ozzie and Harriet aired in syndication on Los Angeles independent channels regularly during the early 1970s. Leave it to Beaver aired in 1974 and 1975. Although not a suburban sitcom, The Andy Griffith Show aired regularly during the early 1970s, portraying its own brand of small-town domestic bliss. I consulted the Los Angeles area TV Guide for the years in question. While both maternal figures in Father Knows Best and Leave It To Beaver spent their time exclusively in domestic activities, Mary Beth Haralovich argues that the mother in Beaver was marginalized even further as the father figure supplanted any authority she might have claimed (Haralovich, , “Sitcoms and Suburbs: Positioning the 1950s Homemaker,” Quarterly Review of Film & Video 11 [1989]: 61–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Jameson, Fredric discusses how we “know” the fifties through its television shows (Postmodernism, 281)Google Scholar.

22. The quotation about Happy Days comes from Jones, (Honey, I'm Home! 241)Google Scholar. The pilot of Happy Days aired in 1970 but was not picked up until 1974. It then knocked All in the Family from the top ratings spot in its third season.

23. Mintz, Steven and Kellogg, Susan, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life (New York: Free Press, 1988), 239Google Scholar.

24. Jones, , Honey I'm Home! 190Google Scholar.

25. Taylor, Ella, Prime-Time Families: Television Culture in Postwar America (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989), 73Google Scholar.

26. “The American Family: Future Uncertain,” Time, 12 28, 1970, 34–39Google Scholar. Reader's Digest issued six reports on the American family over a six-month period beginning in January 1973 with “The War on the American Family” and concluding the series with the final article in June 1973, “What's Killing Our Marriages?” Also see Look magazine's special issue on the American Family, January 26, 1971; and “Is the American Family in Danger?” U.S. News and World Report, 04 16, 1973, 71–72Google Scholar.

27. To see the photograph, consult “American Family” (34). The nearly naked children, however, seem quite contemporary. Thus, the merging of the 1950s and the 1970s in this photograph echos Bechtle's paintings.

28. Faludi, Susan, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 34–35Google Scholar.

29. Bechtle states that he used “the family, children and so on” as subject matter for his work in Paul J. Karlstrom interview with Robert Bechtle, Part III (February 1, 1980), 8, the Oral History Collections of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

30. McDonald's did away with jukeboxes, cigarette vending machines, and pinball games by the late 1960s, as the company sought to discourage teenaged customers and sanitize its image (Kendall, Elaine, “The Most, Least, Famous Boring Food in America,” Vogue, 10 1969, 258Google Scholar). For discussions of franchise restaurant styling, see Luxenberg, Stan, Roadside Empires: How the Chains Franchised America (New York: Viking, 1985), 5Google Scholar; and Langdon, Philip, Orange Roofs, Golden Arches: The Architecture of American Chain Restaurants (New York: Knopf, 1986), 68Google Scholar.

31. Chalfen, Richard, Snapshot Versions of Life (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1987), 96–99Google Scholar. Bechtle discusses his at times conscious posing of people (see note 15).

32. Karp, Ivan, “Robert Bechtle,” in Robert Bechtle: A Retrospective Exhibition (Sacramento, Calif.: E. B. Crocker Art Gallery, 1973), unpaginatedGoogle Scholar.

33. Friedan, Betty, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Norton, 1963), 239, 291Google Scholar.

34. Langdon, , Orange Roofs, 145Google Scholar.

35. Raynor, Vivien, “Art: While Waiting for Tomorrow,” New York Times, 12 23, 1977, sec. C, p. 23Google Scholar. Raynor concludes with “Pointless as the snapshots they evidently once were, the compositions, enlarged to three-quarters life size on canvas or rendered as watercolors, become menacing in their nothingness.” Raynor is no fan of photorealism in general: she claims that photorealism is past its prime and “has no place to go but back down into the primordial ooze of mass entertainment, from which it is generally dragged in an anti—intellectual spirit to prove that art is strictly a matter of virtuosity.”

36. Friedan went on to cofound the National Organization for Women in 1966. Friedan, Karp, and Raynor share in their use of the term “desperate,” or “desperation,” to describe either women's situation in the late 1950s, in Friedan's case, or Bechtle's works (see Friedan, , Feminine Mystique, 15Google Scholar).

37. Saegert, Susan, “Masculine Cities and Feminine Suburbs: Polarized Ideas, Contradictory Realities,” Signs 5 (Spring 1980, supplementary volume): s96–s111CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Saegert is critical of the tendency to polarize women in suburbs and men in urban locales, yet points out that while this split is a fiction it nevertheless “finds its way into public policy and planning and into women's and men's sense of who they are” (s111).

38. Morgan, Robin, Introduction to Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement, ed. Morgan, Robin (New York: Vintage, 1970), xxGoogle Scholar.

39. Jones, Beverly, “The Dynamics of Marriage and Motherhood,” in Sisterhood is Powerful (66)Google Scholar.

40. Ibid., 57–58.

41. Bernard, Jessie, “The Paradox of the Happy Marriage,” in Woman in Sexist Society: Studies in Power and Powerlessness, ed. Gornick, Vivian and Morgan, Barbara K. (New York: Basic, 1971), 156Google Scholar.

42. Rowbotham, Sheila, Woman's Consciousness, Man's World (Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1973), 76Google Scholar; cited in Gatlin, Rochelle, American Women Since 1945 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1987), 50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43. Rosenblum, Robert, “Painting America First,” Art In America, 01–02 1976, 85Google Scholar.

44. “American Family,” 35 (my emphasis).

45. See Kessler-Harris, Alice, Women Have Always Worked: A Historical Overview (Old Westbury, N.Y.: Feminist, 1981), 144–62Google Scholar; and Kessler-Harris, , Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 312–19Google Scholar.

46. In 1967, Bechtle painted Max Piggyback, which depicts Bechtle with a small boy on his shoulders (presumably his son). This painting is the only one that depicts Bechtle alone with a child, and is more realistic than photorealistic. Thus, it could be considered more impressionistic than the apparent photographic accuracy displayed in other paintings.

47. Abbott, Pamela and Wallace, Claire, The Family and the New Right (London: Pluto, 1992), 10, 12Google Scholar.

48. Theriot, Nancy, Nostalgia on the Right: Historical Roots of the Idealized Family (Chicago: Midwest Research, 1983), 36Google Scholar. Although Bechtle's paintings were not well received initially (in the early 1960s), by the late 1960s his work, along with that of other photorealists, gained national and international favor among collectors. In 1970–71, Bechtle joined the New York O. K. Harris Gallery, one of the foremost dealers of photorealism (Albright, Thomas, Art in the San Francisco Bay Area 1948–1980 [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985], 218–19Google Scholar.

49. Coontz, , The Way We Never Were, 29–30Google Scholar. For a revisionist history of women in postwar American that expands the discourse along lines of race and class, see Meyerowitz, Joanne, ed., Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945–1960 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

50. Lowenthal, David, “Nostalgia Tells It Like It Wasn't,” in The Imagined Past: History and Nostalgia, ed. Shaw, Christopher and Chase, Malcolm (Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1989), 29Google Scholar.

51. Paul J. Karlstrom interview with Robert Bechtle, Part I (September 13, 1978), 6, Oral History Collections of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

52. Jameson, , Postmodernism, 19Google Scholar. George Lucas thought of his film as taking place in the 1950s (see Pollock, Dale, Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas [New York: Harmony, 1983], 105)Google Scholar.