Bleacher Seats at an Outdoor Animal Show, 1960s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Bleacher Seats at an Outdoor Animal Show, 1960s — Archive & Atlas

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Bleacher Seats at an Outdoor Animal Show, 1960s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1960–1969

AA-2026-021C2C

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The tiered wooden benches under the vine-covered pergola belong to one of those open-air amphitheatres zoos and marine parks built by the dozen in the 1960s, the kind meant to hold a few hundred people for twenty minutes of trained seals or dolphins. Children have claimed the top rail the way children always do, perched with their feet dangling over a drop that no one present seems to consider a problem, because in this decade a wooden ledge was considered adequate childproofing.

Below them the adults have settled into the business of waiting, which in 1960s America meant a can of Dr Pepper, a pair of cat-eye sunglasses, and the specific patience of people who drove a long way to get here. The woman in white with the sculpted hairdo has the look of someone monitoring the situation without moving a muscle, which was, at the time, considered sufficient supervision.

Nobody in the frame is watching whatever the show is about to be. They are watching each other, or nothing, in the unbothered way of a crowd that has done this before and knows exactly how long forty minutes takes.

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