Three in Sunday Best Beside a Sedan, 1950s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Three in Sunday Best Beside a Sedan, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Three in Sunday Best Beside a Sedan, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-F838CD

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Somebody had just bought a car, or was about to be seen standing next to one, and in the 1950s those were often treated as the same achievement. Two women and a man line up along the flank of a broad white sedan the way people once lined up for a photograph meant to prove they were doing fine, thank you, chrome trim and all included in the accomplishment.

The older woman in the centre has the soft, settled posture of someone used to being flanked by relatives at gatherings, hands folded the way you fold them when told not to fidget. The man beside her wears a tie for an occasion that required no tie, because in that decade a tie was simply what adult men wore outdoors, rain or shine or family reunion. Nobody is looking at the car. Everyone is looking at the camera, which was, for one afternoon, the most important machine present.

The handbag dangling from the younger woman's arm and the practised smiles all around suggest this was a visit, not an errand, the kind of stop where you get out of the car specifically to be photographed beside it before getting back in and driving somewhere else.

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