AA-2026-BFB60F
On the image
A man in a white t-shirt swings a rock hammer at an exposed cliff face, the posture of someone who has read the strata like a sentence and is now punctuating it. He carries a sample bag on his belt and sunglasses against the glare, but no hard hat, because in the 1960s a geologist's confidence in his own footing counted as protective equipment.
Behind him a colleague crouches with a notebook, recording whatever the hammer is about to reveal, on the assumption that a hand-written field note taken at the base of a quarry wall would still mean something decades later. The layered rock above them, tilted and banded in ochre and grey, took longer to form than either man's career would last, a fact neither seems to be dwelling on.
The scene has the unhurried authority of applied science before liability waivers, when a man could lean into an unstable slope in street clothes and call it a workday. Nobody here is worried about the loose rubble underfoot. That was somebody else's job, if it was anybody's job at all.
Visually related — by likeness
Geologist Examining Rock Strata with Hand Hammer, 1960s Field Survey. 1960–1969. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-BFB60F. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/geologist-examining-rock-strata-with-hand-hammer-1960s-field-survey.
@misc{aaAA2026BFB60F,
title = {Geologist Examining Rock Strata with Hand Hammer, 1960s Field Survey},
year = {1960–1969},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-BFB60F},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/geologist-examining-rock-strata-with-hand-hammer-1960s-field-survey}
}TY - ART TI - Geologist Examining Rock Strata with Hand Hammer, 1960s Field Survey PY - 1960–1969 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-BFB60F UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/geologist-examining-rock-strata-with-hand-hammer-1960s-field-survey ER -
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